Rating: 
Summary: A breathtaking departure
Review: This book is a breathtaking and ambitious departure for Roddy Doyle - it is an account of Ireland at the time of republican revolution, told through the eyes of one of Dublin's teeming citizens, who rises - literally - from the gutter, to become one of Michael Collins boys - a cop-killer for the IRA.Not only an account of the birth of the Irish Republic, it is the tale of a one legged whorehouse doorkeeper, and childhood and life of his son, Henry Smart, who finds employment with the IRA not because of burning political ideals but as a means of survival and possible fame. The sheer depth of the descriptive narrative is impressive. Like Graham Swift's Waterland, it serves as a historical document as well as a work of fiction - this reader came away from the novel entertained and educated, and from a British point of view, shocked at the subjugation of Empire. Tragically comic, Doyle exhibits much of the pithy, down to earth, humour of human tragedy that served him so well in his earlier work. It would have been easy to write a biased account of the embattled Irish fighting a united war against the evil English - but Doyle concentrates on the experiences of Henry, who finds that all sides have the capacity for double-crossing and murder. A Star Called Henry marks the maturity of Roddy Doyles' writing, and will doubtless be classed as one of the great works of Irish literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Doyle's new book begins the story of an IRA assassin
Review: Roddy Doyle's great new book, "A Star Called Henry," is a stirring rush of a story set at the beginning of the century as the Irish Republic Army is taking shape. The novel, the first in a trilogy planned by Doyle, takes narrator Henry Smart from an infant in his boozy mother's arms to a damaged 20-year-old with a long career as an IRA assassin. Henry's addled mom spends her time looking up the stars, which represent all the children she has lost. His father is a dim-witted bouncer at a Dublin brothel who threatens (and kills) people with his wooden leg. Henry takes to the streets, developing keen survival skills and contempt for the forces that keep he and his family down. He hooks up with men who hate the British. Henry, while a bitter youth, is apolitical and is just looking for adventure and sustenance. Henry also has an odd, Bonnie and Clyde-style romance with Miss O'Shea, an older woman as eager to battle the Brits as any man. Doyle mixes in real historical figures (his depiction of famed rebel Michael Collins is wonderfully entertaining) and events into Henry's adventurous life. But, this is no romanticized tale of Ireland's fight for liberation. The book is filled with flawed leaders, inducing violence and putting Ireland's innocent a risk in the name of profit, as well as freedom. Henry grows up fast and his narration comes at a breakneck pace. In the beginning, Henry is a folk hero. He makes it clear he is a great warrior and lover, and quite possibly a genius. By the end, he has realized the tragic cost of the cause for which he has committed murder - a cause that eventually turns on him.
Rating:
Summary: EXTRAORDINARY READING AND STORY
Review: This extraordinarily rich tale of young Henry Smart, from his birth in 1901 to age 20, is made even richer by the lyric reading of Roddy Doyle. Henry, son of a one-legged bouncer and hit-man, is the couple's third child and the first to live through infancy. He suffers the quintessential poverty-stricken Irish childhood described rather frequently in current fiction, but he is also a "star" in his mother's eyes. Forsaken by his father before his double digit year, young Henry is on his own and on the streets. Yet he contains such a zest for life and is imbued with so strong a heart that he becomes one of the more endearing protagonists in recent years.
Rating:
Summary: A Genius Called Roddy Doyle
Review: The man behind 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha' and 'The Barrytown Trilogy', Roddy Doyle, is capable of working more magic than we readers can ever imagine, and 'A Star Called Henry' is a testament to his ability as a historian and a storyteller. Never has a miserably poor Irish childhood like Henry Smart's been described in more beautiful prose, replete with imagery of dead siblings reborn as stars. Henry Smart's boyhood in the dirty, crime-infested streets of Dublin is humorous, touching and often sad. Orphaned not by the death of his parents but by poverty and abandonment, Henry leads his younger brother Victor into a life of crime; hunger and desperation being their main motivation for 'fecking' bread and killing cows with blades hidden in caps. The hard life led by the children is tempered with the tenderness the brothers feel for each other. Henry and Victor's attempt at 'getting an education' is seriously funny, but the gaiety does not last long. Victor dies of tuberculosis, and this bitter experience shapes many of Henry's beliefs and ideals as an adult. By the time he is 14, Henry is a handsome young hulk in the Irish Republican Army. In the Army, he finds love, respect, but also betrayal. At once a love story and a history of the Irish Rebellion, 'A Star Called Henry' is a novel that is all substance and no filler.
Rating:
Summary: A perfect blending of history and fiction
Review: "Who was he and where did he come from?...He invented himself, and reinvented." From the early pages of the novel, A Star Called Henry, Roddy Doyle creates a memorable character, Henry Smart, whose search for identity coincides with Ireland's struggle for independence. The history of Henry's life, son of an one-legged, bouncer and sometime hitman for a Dublin brothel, mirrors the often bloody, violent battles of the Irish Rebellion against the oppression of the British Empire. The fictionalized life of Henry Smart, captures the energy, struggles, and contradictions of Ireland's move from British rule to independence. The birth of Henry Smart signals the beginning of his identity crisis. Named for a deceased brother, and his father, initially Henry's birth is met with fanfare and celebration. However, like the marriage of his parents, the beautiful Melody Nash and the beastly Henry Smart, the harsh reality of living in the slums of Dublin replaces all illusions. While first believed to be a blessing from God, Henry comes to represent the pain of too many loss children for his mother and the end of a dream for his father. When Henry's father abandons his family, a young Henry hits the streets, searching for adventure, love, and his father. While living on the street, Henry encounters members of Sinn Féin, a nationalist organization, and the first of his many identities. After the Easter Uprising of 1916, Henry's reputation as a killer, and lover, grows and sets the stage for his greatest adventure - the truth about his father. Henry's involvement with Sinn Féin and the freedom of his fellow countrymen, lead him to a startling realization about his father and himself.
Rating:
Summary: Doyle's new book begins the story of an IRA assassin
Review: Roddy Doyle's great new book, "A Star Called Henry," is a stirring rush of a story set at the beginning of the century as the Irish Republic Army is taking shape. The novel, the first in a trilogy planned by Doyle, takes narrator Henry Smart from an infant in his boozy mother's arms to a damaged 20-year-old with a long career as an IRA assassin. Henry's addled mom spends her time looking up the stars, which represent all the children she has lost. His father is a dim-witted bouncer at a Dublin brothel who threatens (and kills) people with his wooden leg. Henry takes to the streets, developing keen survival skills and contempt for the forces that keep he and his family down. He hooks up with men who hate the British. Henry, while a bitter youth, is apolitical and is just looking for adventure and sustenance. Henry also has an odd, Bonnie and Clyde-style romance with Miss O'Shea, an older woman as eager to battle the Brits as any man. Doyle mixes in real historical figures (his depiction of famed rebel Michael Collins is wonderfully entertaining) and events into Henry's adventurous life. But, this is no romanticized tale of Ireland's fight for liberation. The book is filled with flawed leaders, inducing violence and putting Ireland's innocent a risk in the name of profit, as well as freedom. Henry grows up fast and his narration comes at a breakneck pace. In the beginning, Henry is a folk hero. He makes it clear he is a great warrior and lover, and quite possibly a genius. By the end, he has realized the tragic cost of the cause for which he has committed murder - a cause that eventually turns on him.
Rating:
Summary: EXTRAORDINARY READING AND STORY
Review: This extraordinarily rich tale of young Henry Smart, from his birth in 1901 to age 20, is made even richer by the lyric reading of Roddy Doyle. Henry, son of a one-legged bouncer and hit-man, is the couple's third child and the first to live through infancy. He suffers the quintessential poverty-stricken Irish childhood described rather frequently in current fiction, but he is also a "star" in his mother's eyes. Forsaken by his father before his double digit year, young Henry is on his own and on the streets. Yet he contains such a zest for life and is imbued with so strong a heart that he becomes one of the more endearing protagonists in recent years.
Rating:
Summary: Visceral Irish History
Review: The first salvo in Doyle's fictional chronicle of 20th century Irish history lands only slightly off the bullseye. Consistently funny, unrelentingly grim, populated by sharp characters speaking pitch-perfect dialogue, A Star Called Henry begins with a bang. The first chapters, detailing the grinding poverty of the Dublin slums, are so arresting the tale that follows can't help but suffer somewhat in comparison. Henry Smart's journey from homeless orphan to folk hero, from troublemaker to terrorist, and finally to an understanding of this journey, plays like myth and documentary intertwined. Though this combination is unusual and powerful, the book flags around the two-thirds mark as the violence becomes repetitive and the characters seem to recede into their more simplistic, folk-hero silhouettes. But Doyle's narrative is purposeful, if perhaps overlong, and he eventually draws his story taut, as Henry's hard won understanding of exactly what he's been killing for brings the book to a wise and chilling conclusion. A Star Called Henry takes some work, but in the end proves well worth the effort.
Rating: 
Summary: did not enjoy
Review: Personnaly I did not like this novel. I found myself wishing it would end just so I could say I read it (still never finished). It was hard for me to read it. But, I got this recomendation from a cousin of mine who was raving about it. I think I am one of the few people who did not enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: A successful marriage of fiction and history
Review: This book is a very successful attempt to portray Irish history in the early part of the century via the experiences and perceptions of a fictional character. You come away from it feeling that you have both read a good, well-written novel and learned something about history. The subject matter is absorbing, both in the early part of the novel, where one sees how abject the poverty was of Dublin's poorest inhabitants, and later on, where the focus moves to the characters who got the British out of most of Ireland, and the way in which they did it. Doyle also does some interesting things with language and structure in the book, which moves it past the common herd of novels and give it some interest on the literary level as well. All in all it's a very satisfying book, and I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
|
