NOVEL OF THE WEEK Smart, uncertain


The Dead Republic Roddy Doyle JONATHAN CAPE, 336PP, £17.99 Tablet Bookshop price £16.20


Commitments spoke of an urban Ireland that had been wracked by unemployment, poverty and emigration. His subsequent childhood novel, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, paved the way for the likes of Frank McCourt; while, more recently, Doyle’s re-imagined version of The Playboy of the Western World showed a concern for the “new Irish” often left behind by the Celtic-Tiger bubble. His new novel is published after Ireland’s painful financial meltdown, since when many of the old certainties of the country seem to have vanished. Fittingly, the book concludes by showing that the republic is a dead thing. The protagonist, Henry Smart, once a hero of the revolutionary era, becomes a confused, fraudulent, quasi-religious relic, while the Provisional IRA simply fights for the kind of principles we now associate with discredited bankers. When Henry asks one republican leader in the 1980s why the war continues, the response comes in the language of the market: the war is all about “The copyright. The brand. Who owns Irishness”. This novel forms the final part of an ambitious trilogy. In the first, Henry Smart fights in the Easter Rising, and then works for Michael Collins. In the second, Henry ends up in Chicago, where he befriends Louis Armstrong. The Dead Republic brings Henry back to Ireland: he works as an IRA consultant for the film-maker John Ford, and then takes a job as a school caretaker. Here he appears to invent modern child-protection policies four decades early, he is injured in a UVF explosion, and then becomes involved with the Provisional IRA and the start of the peace process. The book has something of a feel of an Irish Forrest Gump, with Henry Smart stumbling through some of the key moments of twentieth-century Ireland. However, for a reader who is not familiar with the central events of Irish history, this bookmay be hard going. International readers may find parts of Doyle’s novel difficult to understand if they know nothing of, say, the Dublin-Monaghan bombings, the 1970 Arms Crisis, or – particularly – The Quiet Man. The book is not helped by its convoluted plot, which is perhaps necessary with any extended trilogy. After all, the opening section with John Ford is needed in order to get Henry back to Ireland, but scarcely dovetails with the later stages, when Henry is pulled between the IRA and the police. Although there are some memorable moments, then, the book is never quite the sum of its parts.James Moran


R 01420 592974


oddy Doyle’s work tends to capture the zeitgeist. His 1987 novel The


AUDIOBOOK REVIEW


When worlds collide Beauty


Raphael Selbourne, read by Julie Maisey WHOLE STORY AUDIOBOOKS,£19.99.


characters. T


First there is Beauty. Raised until she was a toddler in Bangladesh, sent infrequently to school in the UK, shipped “home”, aged 14, to be married to an aged mullah, she has


here are three viewpoints in this story, belonging to three very different


been returned to her family in Wolverhampton after years of refusing sex with her husband. When she runs away from her violent brothers, she plunges herself into a white British culture she doesn’t understand; she deeply pities the elderly residents of the care home where she works, for example, assuming that none of them has any children to care for them. Next is Peter, a middle-aged, middle-class bookseller, in flight from his uptight, long-term girlfriend Kate who has a media job and – he feels - endless, shallow-thinking friends. Lastly, there is Mark, a young ex-con whose home-made tattoos and shaved head belie his good heartedness. He is kind to Beauty. Peter, by contrast, excited by the idea that he is liberating a victim of primitive, religious ignorance, shocks and frightens her with his atheistic views. Western, secular liberalism comes badly out of this book. Islam adds a meaning to Beauty’s life that Mark’s and Peter’s both lack – despite the fact that it comes tied to a vicious superstition and deep male chauvinism. What emerges most vividly in the novel, however, is a sense of the deep gulfs between social groups in our society. Julie Maisey’s narration, with its masterly control of different accents, communicates this beautifully. Julian Margaret Gibbs


Oxford celebrates the visit of Benedict XVI and the beatification of John Henry Newman


John Henry Newman A Biography Ian Ker


‘This masterly biography makes clear how Newman came to cut such a commanding intellectual and spiritual figure in his own age and today.’ Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman


784 pages, Paperback 978-0-19-959659-1, £18.99


Oxford is proud to publish the Letters & Diaries and the Sermons of John Henry Newman on behalf of the Birmingham Oratory. Please visit www.oup.com/uk/academic/newman to find out more.


Tel: 01536 741727 Visit: www.oup.com/uk 18 September 2010 | THE TABLET | 33


Newman A Short Introduction Owen Chadwick


The classic short study, reissued with a new preface to celebrate Newman’s beatification


112 pages, Paperback 978-0-19-960040-3, £7.99


Ratzinger’s Faith


The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI Tracey Rowland


‘A book with an inspirational message’ Joanna Bogle, Catholic Times


240 pages, Paperback 978-0-19-957034-8, £8.99


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48