Collections

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha , two plays set in the north Dublin suburb of Barrytown From novelist and screenwriter Roddy Doyle come these two colorful plays. both set in the North Dublin suburb of Barrytown. In Brownbread , three young men kidnap a bishop but soon come to realize--when the U.S. Marines invade--that their brilliant adventure is nothing more than a colossal mistake. War is set at the Hiker's Rest, a pub where two trivia addicts meet every month to answer questions posed by Denis trhe quizmaster who hates wrong answers and shoots to kill. These earthy, exuberant works show why The New York Times Book Review says Doyle's "versatility and brio...may shock the neighbors, but...you can't take your eyes off him."

For his many devoted readers: the first collection of stories from Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle. For the past few years Roddy Doyle has written stories for Metro Eireann, a magazine by and for immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories takes a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in Ireland today. The Deportees now brings those stories together for all of Roddy’s devoted readers, ranging from a terrifying ghost story, “The Pram,” in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge’s older sisters and decides–using a phrase she has just learnt–to “scare them shitless,” to the glorious title story itself, where Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed the beloved Commitments, decides it’s time to find a new band, and this time no white Irish need apply. Multicultural to a fault, the Deportees specialize not in soul music, but in the songs of Woody Guthrie. From the Hardcover edition.

Bullfighting is Roddy Doyle's eagerly anticipated second collection; a series of bittersweet tales about men and middle age, revealing a panorama of Ireland today. The men in Bullfighting are each concerned with loss in different ways - of their place in their world, of power, virility, love - of the boom days in Ireland's recent history and the Celtic Tiger. "The stories, his memories, were wearing out," the narrator of the title story thinks, "and there was nothing new replacing them." The stories move from classrooms to crematoriums, local pubs to bullrings; featuring an array of men at their working day and at rest, taking stock and reliving past glories. In the first, "Recuperation," a man sets off for a prescribed walk around his neighbourhood, the sights triggering memories and recollections of his wife, his children, his younger days. In "Animals," George remembers caring for his children's many pets, his efforts to spare them grief when they die or disappear, looking, in the eyes of his wife, like a hero, like "your man from ER." But now his kids are reared and he's unemployed, and he's slowly getting used to that. "Suffer. Your man Krugman said, when he asked how Ireland should deal with the next ten years. Well, this is George, suffering." Brilliantly observed, funny and moving, the stories in Bullfighting present a new vision of contemporary Ireland, of its woes and triumphs, and of the Irish middle-aged male confronting its new realities. It is a masterful new collection from one of the country's greatest writers.

Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, take the piss… They talk about their wives, their kids, their kids’ pets, their football teams and – this being Ireland in 2011–12 –about the euro, the crash, the presidential election, the Queen’s visit. But these men are not parochial or small-minded; one of them knows where to find the missing Colonel Gaddafi (he’s working as a cleaner at Dublin Airport); they worry about Greek debt, the IMF and the bondholders ( whatever they might be); in their fashion, they mourn the deaths of Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, Davy Jones and Robin Gibb; and they ask each other the really important questions like ‘Would you ever let yourself be digitally enhanced?’Inspired by a year’s worth of news, Two Pints distils the essence of Roddy Doyle’s comic genius. This book shares the concision of a collection of poems, and the timing of a virtuoso comedian.

Following on Two Pints , another hilarious book on everything that matters from the brilliant Roddy Doyle. Two men meet for a pint -- or two -- in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, curse the ref, say a last farewell. In this second collection of delicious comic dialogues Doyle's drinkers ponder: • Barack and Michelle Obama • David Beckham ("Would you tattoo your kids' names on the back of your neck?" "They wouldn't fit.") • Jimmy Savile ("a gobshite") • the financial crisis (again) • abortion (again) • and horsemeat in your burger... Once again, those we have lost troop through their thoughts -- Lou Reed, Seamus Heaney, Reg Presley, Nelson Mandella, Phil Everly, Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Temple -- and they still have that unerring ability to ask the really fundamental questions like "Would you take penalty points for your missis?"

FROM THE AUTHOR OF TWO PINTS AND TWO MORE PINTS Another round of two pints from the ever-brilliant, always hilarious imagination of Roddy Doyle Two men meet for a pint - or three - in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights and mourn friends gone: David Bowie, Prince, Princess Leia and Young Frankenstein. Around them the world of Brexit, Trump, war and referendums storms, but some things never change. Inspired by the last five years of news, Roddy Doyle's Two More for the Road offers a strong brew of Roddy Doyle's comic genius - to be downed in one riotous sitting, or savoured over, laugh after laugh.

***A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR THIS AUTUMN*** A brilliantly warm, witty and moving portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heart-rending short stories Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these ten, beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret. Told with Doyle's signature warmth, wit and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet. 'A quietly devastating collection of short stories that brilliantly portrays the pervasive sense of hopelessness that immobilised us during the dog days of Covid' Sunday Times