I feel quite similarly to this book that I did to James Kelman’s book How Late it Was How Late, but that this one is significantly better for a few ways. If you haven’t read this one, it’s spiritually connected to Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy — The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van — in that it takes place in Barrytown, but it’s mostly inside the mind/experience of a 12 year old boy in the 1960s/1970s or so.
It’s a bit stream of consciousness and a bit rambling in the ways in which books that are written not quite but close to in dialect can be. And in all those ways and some more, I feel like it’s a tour du force in execution, but wasn’t particularly enjoyable to read. I loved the Barrytown books. They were an absolute blast, and this one was not as much.
The biggest difference I think is in tone. You feel in on the joke with those books — everything is a lovable goof, and there’s a trickster quality to everything. There’s bit and pieces of that here, but this book had a much clearer heart of sadness in the middle of it. Also with this, I felt like there wasn’t a driving force, plot-wise. And I don’t mind books that are low on plot, but when they are, that has to be replaced by something. And here, it’s mostly replaced with style and form, more than any meaningful content. I am not trying to be harsh about it, just simply that I didn’t find this ultimately compelling in the ways I found those.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Paddy-Clarke-Ha/dp/0140233903/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3E4CG3M68TMVZ&keywords=paddy+clarke+ha+ha+ha&qid=1552586819&s=gateway&sprefix=paddy+clarke++ha+ha+ha%2Caps%2C346&sr=8-1)