Roddy Doyle

the long version

"Dermot McCarthy Argues that Doyle's representation of working-class Dublin has broken with the traditional literary view of the Irish as a homogeneous "people" and has given a voice to a little-heard side of modern Ireland. His characters negotiate a culture that is a complex processor of exogenous influences and indigenous adaptation and assimilation. At the same time, they must negotiate an identity between the often conflicting demands of self-expression and individualism and belonging to a family, community or nation." "Doyle's fictions cohere around a single concern, the defence of the individual's struggle to live with dignity and decency during the seismic changes that have shaken Irish society in recent times. Setting Doyle's six novels in the context of these changes McCarthy stakes a claim for Doyle as the pre-eminent chronicler of contemporary Ireland."--Jacket.