Promotional Information

This is a novel of prodigious energy and invention. Its language and rhythms are as breathtaking as the music it celebrates.

About the Author

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of nine acclaimed novels including the Barrytown Trilogy, two collections of short stories, Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents, Two Pints, a collection of dialogues, and most recently, The Guts, which saw the return of Jimmy Rabbitte from The Commitments. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Reviews

"The words crackle and fizz - a dazzling evocation of the Jazz Age... Magical and marvellous" Independent on Sunday "A virtuoso of the sentence...Doyle wonderfully recreates a world of flophouses and speakeasies, flappers and bootleggers" Guardian "Doyle's performance is, again, extraordinary for the richness of allusion, the facility with which history is dovetailed with invention, the energy of the prose" Daily Telegraph "Brilliantly imagined... Utterly magnificent, the finest work he has done" Sunday Tribune "Kicks off at a furious lick and just gets faster, hotter, louder. Hugely, unremittingly entertaining" Scotsman

Doyle stumbles somewhat in this sequel to his excellent 1999 bestseller, A Star Called Henry. Beginning with Irish revolutionary Henry Smart's arrival in New York City in 1924, the story follows Henry's subsequent adventures in advertising, bootlegging, pornography, unlicensed dentistry and keeping ahead of the former associates who'd like to see him eat a lead sandwich. After encroaching too much on a mobster's turf-and getting lucky with another powerful fellow's kept lady-Henry hightails it to Chicago, where he becomes the unofficial manager of a young Louis Armstrong. Though serendipitously reunited with his beloved wife and the daughter he's never met while trying to rob her employer's house, Henry soon heads back to New York to help Louis make it big. While just as brash and lively as Doyle's earlier novels, this one isn't nearly as focused; the dialogue-heavy narrative is interspersed with shifts in setting, time and plot, and characters appear and disappear with little consequence, their spoken parts hasty, repetitive and often perplexing. Worse, Doyle takes Henry Smart's charm for granted; readers unfamiliar with his previous adventures may roll their eyes at his arrogance and incessant sexual encounters. There's just too much material; any of the novel's numerous strands could have been fleshed out into its own book. That said, the novel is still a lot of improbable fun. Agent, John Sutton. (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

A Star Called Henry returns, remaking himself as a bon vivant American. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.