The Van

Rating:
Summary: I think I'll give the fish & chips a miss
Review: "The Van" is the third and final part of Roddy Doyle's "Barrytown Trilogy", following "The Commitments" and "The Snapper", and it's the best of the three.

Jimmy Rabbitte Sr and his friend Bimbo live in Dublin and are unemployed. They hit upon the idea of starting up a business selling burgers and fish and chips out of a dilapidated van in order to beat (or rather supplement) their dependence on state benefits. How will their entrepreneurial venture turn out?

Doyle's dip into working class life in Barrytown is great if you can cope with the patois, and if you are into the humour: there's much in "The Van" to raise a laugh, but I felt that the dialogue only sparked intermittently. Be warned: the descriptions of food preparation in the van could I suppose turn stomachs, and confirmed my darkest suspicions about mobile fast food joints.

I suppose a case could be made that beneath all the ribaldry, Doyle is saying something more profound about the desperate lives of the unemployed and/or their resilience - the fact that Jimmy Sr's son Darren is doing well at school and appears to have something of a future is a near miracle given his background. This can be contrasted with darker parts of the novel in which a violent, disaffected, hopeless youth "culture" is exposed.

At least one other reviewer has commented that "The Van" is more of a film script than a novel. It can read that way, but so did its predecessors. But because it's so heavily dependent upon dialogue, that dialogue has to be very strong, witty or compelling throughout: too heavy a burden to carry at times. There were patches of the novel where I felt I was just coasting through the pages, with nothing really happening in the plot, awaiting the next incident which would attract my interest.

It's all entertaining enough in an uninvolving sort of way, but it wouldn't make me go out of my way to read more of Doyle's stuff.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: I think I'll give the fish & chips a miss
Review: "The Van" is the third and final part of Roddy Doyle's "Barrytown Trilogy", following "The Commitments" and "The Snapper", and it's the best of the three.

Jimmy Rabbitte Sr and his friend Bimbo live in Dublin and are unemployed. They hit upon the idea of starting up a business selling burgers and fish and chips out of a dilapidated van in order to beat (or rather supplement) their dependence on state benefits. How will their entrepreneurial venture turn out?

Doyle's dip into working class life in Barrytown is great if you can cope with the patois, and if you are into the humour: there's much in "The Van" to raise a laugh, but I felt that the dialogue only sparked intermittently. Be warned: the descriptions of food preparation in the van could I suppose turn stomachs, and confirmed my darkest suspicions about mobile fast food joints.

I suppose a case could be made that beneath all the ribaldry, Doyle is saying something more profound about the desperate lives of the unemployed and/or their resilience - the fact that Jimmy Sr's son Darren is doing well at school and appears to have something of a future is a near miracle given his background. This can be contrasted with darker parts of the novel in which a violent, disaffected, hopeless youth "culture" is exposed.

At least one other reviewer has commented that "The Van" is more of a film script than a novel. It can read that way, but so did its predecessors. But because it's so heavily dependent upon dialogue, that dialogue has to be very strong, witty or compelling throughout: too heavy a burden to carry at times. There were patches of the novel where I felt I was just coasting through the pages, with nothing really happening in the plot, awaiting the next incident which would attract my interest.

It's all entertaining enough in an uninvolving sort of way, but it wouldn't make me go out of my way to read more of Doyle's stuff.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't stop laughing.........
Review: Doyle obviously has a feel for his characters but, please, I find it very difficult to believe that a grown man with grown children would habitually speak with the grossness usually employed by adolescent boys. Wonder if anyone has counted the number of "fucks" Jimmy Sr. uses in a 311-page book--bet the percentage of the total words would be a shocker. Yep, I'm sombody's grandmother, but I'm also a totally devoted reader of great fiction written in all styles and tones; Doyle's redundant use of the "F" word was tiresome and detracted from his otherwise fine story and characters.

Rating:
Summary: Funny
Review: Funny is the only word which keeps appealing to me about this novel it is so, witty and of all the books i have ever read i find this one rather amusing i never thought it would happen with a book but the language and irish humor pop up time and time again to make for superbe reading

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: I greatly enjoyed this book. I have no knowledge of Ireland, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the culture, but it is a very funny book with a strong emphasis on friendship. I do think the story took too long to get started, but in the end it was well worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Arguably The Most Humorous
Review: I had seen the screen versions of Roddy Doyle's, "The Commitments" and "The Snapper", prior to reading his written work. As I have now experienced his work in both mediums, its as funny on the page as it is on the screen. "The Van" is the last in this trilogy and it definitely focuses on the older of the generations. The movies actually enhanced the book as the actors were spectacular and the memories of their performances kept returning to mind.

The book is almost pure dialogue, and the humor will certainly leave you in pain. The issue of colorful language has been mentioned and while there is no denying its prevalence I don't believe there was any increase in this particular book. When his work is read every word is as clear as the reader's vocabulary, when on screen the accents often rendered dialogue difficult to decipher. The cadence of his writing is so well done, that even when spoken the humor works with a word or two missing, the structure implies the emotion.

Mr. Doyle also wrote, "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors", and this was the previous work of his that I had read. As a writer he has remarkable range as the previous work was dark and violent, and the humor too was black as pitch. It was not just sad it was unsettling. His ability to portray the Human Condition whether bleak or bright, or even with humor when it is all that keeps a character going, in simply brilliant.

If you have not read this man's work or seen the movies I would recommend both formats. His material is great regardless of the medium.

Rating:
Summary: Corny
Review: The Van is one of those books disguised as fiction but is actually a potboiler. The characters are unimpressive and the plot is filled with one clichéd situation after another. The third person narrative is unsuccessful because it doesn't have enough emotional impact. The lack of quotation marks makes it a very frustrating read. The prose resembles a screenplay with pages of dialogues interspersed with descriptions. The Irish dialect is tough to understand. I did start to enjoy it during the last few pages, but it wasn't worth to reread the book again. If you're interested in Irish fiction, skip this and read Dubliners by James Joyce.

Rating:
Summary: The trilogy's best.
Review: Third volume in Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy. It's as well to note how the emphasis of the trilogy shifts over the course of the three novels. The Commitments was about Jimmy Rabbitte, the eldest son, and his mission to bring soul to Dublin. The next was ostensibly about his sister Sharon, and her pregnancy, though we began to see Jimmy Snr take a far larger part, eclipsing his ambitious son. In the Van Jimmr Snr. gets the entire novel to himself. Jimmy is unemployed and worried that, now time has passed, he's grown to like it. The other members of the family ghost in and out of his life, as much a source of puzzlement as affection. His wife is reading George Eliot for some kind of course, his daughter is enclosed with her baby and friends, Jimmy Jnr. still follows his dream (in the bathroom).

This is entirely apt: in the world of the long-term unemployed, enforced idleness causes every thought and motivation to dissolve, and minimal achievements become the sole produce of an entire day. But Jimmy will not lie down or be content to read crap books from the library or take up offers of employment for McDonalds. As much out of a desire to assert his presence as for self-respect, Jimmy Snr. and a friend buy a beat-up van and remake it as a chipper van. It's set at the time of the 1990 world cup, when Ireland did well and England didn't - much is made of the bubbling nationalist sentiment (it's good for business), and the sudden collapse when Ireland is finally knocked out.

I think reviewers who fault the novel on the grounds of its dialogue ('can't understand Irish dialect' - and, likely, any other non-US dialect) are wrong to such a degree that the effort of pointing it out seems barely worthwhile. To counter this armchair criticism, let me tell you this: the Irish are a race of talkers. The words from our mouths, like the events in our lives, are a ceaseless flow - uncontrived, alive, bad, good, but always closer to the surface of life than anyone else's. Think of James Joyce, who always wanted a musical career rathr than a literary one. His words are as just as important when spoken as read and Doyle continues, in his way, this very project. (As does the booker-prize winning author James Kelman in Scotland, whose vernacular novels long predated both those of Doyle and Irvine Welsh) It is rather amusing that one reviewer suggests ignoring The Van in favour of Dubliners, and another castiagates the novel for its lack of quotation marks. Joyce insisted that quotation marks in Dubliners be replaced with dashes to ensue an easier flow of speech - vital to an Irish author with any hopes to accurately render the nature of things. As does Doyle. His characters are very much the contemporary heirs to Joyce's paralysed, hopeful inhabitants of Dublin nearly a century ago. There are many others authors who do, also. I recommend John McGahern (lionised by John Updike), Mary Lavin, and Eugene McCabe. Colm Toibin, also.

Rating:
Summary: The trilogy's best.
Review: Third volume in Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy. It's as well to note how the emphasis of the trilogy shifts over the course of the three novels. The Commitments was about Jimmy Rabbitte, the eldest son, and his mission to bring soul to Dublin. The next was ostensibly about his sister Sharon, and her pregnancy, though we began to see Jimmy Snr take a far larger part, eclipsing his ambitious son. In the Van Jimmr Snr. gets the entire novel to himself. Jimmy is unemployed and worried that, now time has passed, he's grown to like it. The other members of the family ghost in and out of his life, as much a source of puzzlement as affection. His wife is reading George Eliot for some kind of course, his daughter is enclosed with her baby and friends, Jimmy Jnr. still follows his dream (in the bathroom).

This is entirely apt: in the world of the long-term unemployed, enforced idleness causes every thought and motivation to dissolve, and minimal achievements become the sole produce of an entire day. But Jimmy will not lie down or be content to read crap books from the library or take up offers of employment for McDonalds. As much out of a desire to assert his presence as for self-respect, Jimmy Snr. and a friend buy a beat-up van and remake it as a chipper van. It's set at the time of the 1990 world cup, when Ireland did well and England didn't - much is made of the bubbling nationalist sentiment (it's good for business), and the sudden collapse when Ireland is finally knocked out.

I think reviewers who fault the novel on the grounds of its dialogue ('can't understand Irish dialect' - and, likely, any other non-US dialect) are wrong to such a degree that the effort of pointing it out seems barely worthwhile. To counter this armchair criticism, let me tell you this: the Irish are a race of talkers. The words from our mouths, like the events in our lives, are a ceaseless flow - uncontrived, alive, bad, good, but always closer to the surface of life than anyone else's. Think of James Joyce, who always wanted a musical career rathr than a literary one. His words are as just as important when spoken as read and Doyle continues, in his way, this very project. (As does the booker-prize winning author James Kelman in Scotland, whose vernacular novels long predated both those of Doyle and Irvine Welsh) It is rather amusing that one reviewer suggests ignoring The Van in favour of Dubliners, and another castiagates the novel for its lack of quotation marks. Joyce insisted that quotation marks in Dubliners be replaced with dashes to ensue an easier flow of speech - vital to an Irish author with any hopes to accurately render the nature of things. As does Doyle. His characters are very much the contemporary heirs to Joyce's paralysed, hopeful inhabitants of Dublin nearly a century ago. There are many others authors who do, also. I recommend John McGahern (lionised by John Updike), Mary Lavin, and Eugene McCabe. Colm Toibin, also.