Smile
"Smile is a novel that's as original as it is brutal, and as painful as it is necessary. Doyle asks us not just to consider the ravages of post-traumatic stress, but to feel them, or as closely as we can, anyway. It's his bravest novel yet; it's also, by far, his best." –Michael Schaub, npr.org
Rory & Ita
The Giggler Treatment
The Dead Republic
Library Journal Doyle's latest concludes the saga of Henry Smart, the Irish revolutionary first introduced in A Star Called Henry (1999) and revisited in Oh, Play That Thing (2004). Here, the Irish rebel is older, perhaps wiser, and alive after having once again cheated a certain death. Opening in the 1940s and concluding in 2010, […]
A Star Called Henry
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
Wilderness
The New York Times – Jerry Griswold: Wilderness is that rare young adult novel that can speak to every member of the family: hardpressed moms, perceptive fathers, belligerent girls and risk-taking boys. Still, it seems primarily a boy's book, reminding me how I loved stories about survival that began with a small plane crashing in […]
Paula Spencer
James Hynes – The Washington Post : Reading Paula Spencer is pure, undiluted pleasure, and it's not necessary to have read the first novel to thoroughly enjoy this one. Paula is still a very funny woman (and her sharp-tongued sister Carmel is even funnier), and Doyle himself is still the master of the extended set-piece. […]
Oh, Play That Thing
“Henry Smart is on the run. Fleeing from his Irish Republican paymasters, the men for whom he committed murder and mayhem, he has left behind his wife, Miss O’Shea, in a Dublin jail, and his infant daughter. When he lands in America, it’s 1924, and New York is the center of the universe. Henry, ever […]
The Meanwhile Adventures
Publishers Weekly: The Mack family from The Giggler Treatment returns in The Meanwhile Adventures by Roddy Doyle, illus. by Brian Ajhar. This time the Slugs of Dublin don crash helmets in their attempt to take over the world (“No legs good! Two legs bad!”), Mister Mack inadvertently robs a bank and Billie Jean Fleetwood-Mack attempts […]