Product Description

Born in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59233 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The habit of murder becomes a hard one to break; the hero of Roddy Doyle's novel of the Irish War of Independence, like his father before him, kills to order and kills in cold blood. Where his father was simply the one-legged bouncer at a brothel, whose employers used him for any killing that needs to be done, Henry has motives. Growing up on the street, taught his letters by James Connolly, he believes in not just Irish freedom, but workers' revolution. He learns the hard way that his pious middle-class masters do not have this in mind.

A Star Called Henry--passionate, angry, darkly and wildly comic--has something in it to offend everybody. His stirring, deeply anti-romantic, account of the siege of the Dublin Post Office during the Easter Rising is remarkable, but hardly less so is his account of life on the Dublin docks, or Henry's treks around the countryside as one of Michael Collins' hard men, teaching guerrilla warfare to dairy farmers and clerks. The love affair between Henry and his equally blood-thirsty teacher and wife Miss O'Shea is sweet and touching. The first volume of a trilogy, this is a radical departure for Doyle, and a stunning success. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

From the Publisher
'Doyle at his best- his portrait of turn-of-the-century Dublin's dark side is masterful. There is a Dickensian richness to language and character' The Times

About the Author
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of five previous novels, The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Woman Who Walked into Doors. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Customer Reviews

This is a breathtaking and ambitious departure for Doyle
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.

Darkly poetic and bueatifully written.
Dealing with poverty, violence and a period of dark history I could not have imagine that I would enjoy this book as much as I did. Henry Smart is a violent man who bears no evil intent, just a need for survival and purpose.
Passages in which he talks of his mother, brother and father are warm and affectionate despite the sadness of circumstances and show the book at it's best. The passage in which Henry talks about his mother's name is nothing short of wonderful.
If you're looking for light entertainment read something else. If you're looking for literature and a book which presents you with a perspective you had never considered, read this.

A Star indeed. Brilliant. Don't miss this one.
This book is very different from the others, and absolutely brilliant. Doyle abandoned an excellent established, very successful, style and format to create a work that stands as a pinnacle of international literary achievement. Read "The Van" or "The Commitments" and you are in a world of poingant everyday comedy. Read "A Star Called Henry" and you so slip so deep into history that it comes as a shock to put the book down and return to the 21st century. What passion! What pathos! Don't miss this one. Read it.