Guts, The
A warm, funny novel about Jimmy Rabbitte returning to the world of The Commitments. Illness, family, and middle age give the story its emotional edge, but the voice stays playful and alive.
Work Information
Jimmy Rabbitte returns in a funny, poignant middle-aged follow-up.
Roddy Doyle revisits Jimmy Rabbitte as he confronts illness and middle age, mixing comedy with a clear-eyed look at friendship and family.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Published
- 2014-06-26
- Pages
- 352 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.9 x 2.1 x 19.7 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780099587132
- ISBN-10
- 9780099587132
- Price
- 2874 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
Longlisted for the 2015 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Jimmy Rabbitte is back. The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids ... and bowel cancer. He isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be. Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments – Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. This warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life. Includes the short story Jimmy Jazz
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of twelve acclaimed novels including The Commitments , The Snapper , The Van and Smile , two collections of short stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha .
Reviews
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Em The Guts voltamos a encontrar Jimmy Rabbitte (o ex-empresário da banda mais trabalhadora de Dublin) agora com 46 anos, casado, pai de 4 filhos e recentemente diagnosticado com câncer, sendo que com o fantasma da morte pairando sobre sua cabeça, faz com que ele se volte para o seu passado, sua família e o seu amor à música por meio de velhas amizades, incluindo membros da banda mais trabalhadora de Dublin como a gracinha da Imelda Quirke!
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Doyle is brilliant at dialogue. He's often laugh out loud funny. His characters have a sardonic, cynical and barbed outlook on the world, and working class point of view drawn from the way life forecloses on the poor. The subject of cancer comes without most of the cliches of fighting battles and pink sympathy. Because his characters are tough people, used to armoring themselves against the vicissitudes of life, they are extremely suspicious of cheap and easy emotional cliches. Jimmy is a memorable character. Completely flawed, full of good intentions and scathing critical perception, improvising all the time and one step ahead of his own anxiety. It's all guy. The female characters are shallow and mostly exist to indulge the male characters. Imelda Quirk from the Commitments gets a pretty shameful drive-by. It's an old literary tradition and he makes little effort to get past it. If you can't overlook that the novel will bug you, quite reasonably. It's interesting to look at how Doyle both does and does not repeat old cliches about the irish. There's no leprechauns and green fields and fairy BS, but there are lots of colorful verbally dextrous characters spinning elaborate tales, and there's a love of language and lying or rather the way language constructs alternate realities. The story of the Bulgarian band is hilarious, but it's not as far from Darby O'Gill and the little people as you might think from the urban setting. I enjoyed it very much, despite the caveats
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Prompt delivery with no problems. Recommended.
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I'm the same age as Jimmy, with a similar life (no cancer yet though [touch wood]) and this book, like most of Doyle's, resonated with me on about 1,000 levels. I really enjoyed reading it in two sittings. Bring on the movie :-)
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f ...ing brilliant Dub humor, you can practically hear them talking. Enjoyed it from the first to the last page!
Related Literary Awards
- Irish Book Awards Edition 11 (2013) ・Winner