Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Says 10 year old Paddy Clarke about his friends from whom he has decided to move on. He stays awake all night to make sure his Ma and Da are not fighting. He stares at complete darkness (of the iron table) to get over his fear and be grown up. And the change is unhurried, uncomplicated and totally believable from the Point of view of a 10 year old. Se qualcuno, come me, pensasse che “Paddy Clarke ah ah ah” sia un libro divertente, grazie al quale sorridere e svagarsi dai problemi che ci rincorrono, come volevo fare io leggendolo, si sbaglia. “Paddy Clarke ah ah ah” è un libro molto triste, che rilascia sofferenza, una sofferenza che per noi adulti è la peggiore, quella dei bambini a causa del comportamento degli adulti. Doyle, one of my favorite authors, nails the stream-of-consciousness of a young boy, Paddy Clarke of the title. While not exactly spelled out, I think Paddy, our narrator, is about 8 when the book starts and 10 when it finishes. He and his mate Kevin are the defacto leaders of a band of boys who rove a developing subdivision in late 1960's Ireland, wreaking havoc on themselves and anyone who might be in their way. I kept picturing the antics of my two younger brothers in our developing subdivision in Central Illinois. My guy told me of the antics of his pals in a developing subdivision west of Ft Worth and we laughed until we cried! Young boy antics are universal and, believe me, Paddy and his friends were inventive!
It's fascinating to come across these kinds of notes in second-hand books. I wonder, where did these people live, and what was their relationship? It's too intimate to be just a friend, and the "third Christmas" statement doesn't make sense in a family context. So they must have been in a close relationship of some sort. Did it work out between them? Were they happy together, and did it last? Not just any childhood, and certainly not any in 2014 in a middle-class or affluent neighborhood, where the children can now be found indoors, and in silence, save the hum of their tv or computer. This was before schools banned teachers and administrators from hitting you on the hands and heads and promoted any such thing as an anti-bullying policy. This limitation is perhaps sensible considering how tedious Portrait of the Artist gets when Stephen Dedalus goes to university. All the same, this intimate portrayal of childhood does eventually (forgive me) grow old. It starts to feel like one of those dull conversations drunk people have about their favourite childhood TV characters; like a list of memories which – no matter how well described – feels all too repetitive. There is development here: the sense of doom hanging over Paddy's parents' marriage grows and darkens impressively. All the same, it drifts – and I began to grow bored.But author Roddy Doyle isn't preaching about social change, he's just telling a story. Ten-year-old Paddy Clarke's story. It's a meaningful read, despite many stops and starts and a middle that sagged, and if you need quotation marks to distinguish dialogue, you won't find any here.
But childhood isn’t always filled with magic, dreams don’t always come true, and life isn’t always fair. Parents sometimes fight, and children aren’t shielded from the worries of life. In his home, Paddy stays awake all night, listening at his parent's bedroom door, hoping that the fighting ends. But one night, he realized that it was not worth it, when he witnessed his father hitting his mother. Update this section!
I am now into my final three Booker winners, and this one left me somewhat in two minds. I had never read Doyle before and always had a feeling that I wouldn't enjoy it that much.
Great Deal 
New Comment