Product Description

Barrytown, Dublin, is humming with speculation. For Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. After the soccer club Christmas do, only she knows the father of her "snapper". But she's not telling - even though her father has taken a remarkably lively interest in this sudden, but obvious, family crisis.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143015 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of eight acclaimed novels and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Customer Reviews

Extremely Funny and Hard To Put Down!
Laughed till I nearly cried whilst reading this, a side of pregnancy I have never thought of before. This book has been passed around a circle of friends and is the kind of book you want to read all over again in case you missed something the first time around!

ALL-OVER-IRELAND
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958 and saw his first novel, "The Commitments", published in 1987. It was later adapted for the big screen, a version that saw Star Trek's Colm Meaney and a very young Andrea Corr among the cast. "The Snapper" was firs published in 1990 and is the second book in his "Barrytown Trilogy".

Where "The Commitments" followed Jimmy Rabbite's attempts to bring soul "back" to Dublin, he takes a back seat in "The Snapper". (He now hopes to be a famous DJ, rather than a manager or a drummer - an ambition that quickly earns him the nickname "Larry Gogan". You'll probably need to have spent little time in Ireland to catch that one... ). Instead, the starring roles go to his sister, Sharon, and his father, Jimmy Senior. The book opens with Sharon in a horrible situation : twenty years old, still living at home and three months pregnant, she's breaking the 'bad' news to her parents. She's decided not to name the father - though, there's plenty of speculation, suggestion and rumour over the following six months. Some of it is embarrassingly close to the mark, and causes her no end of trouble. While Sharon's pregnancy obviously isn't easy for her, it also puts Jimmy Snr through the mill - shock, concern, embarrassment and anger. He even, briefly, casts himself as her champion in defending her honour.

A very enjoyable and easily book - it's also a good deal better than "The Commitments". While the language is (authentically) 'colourful', it's generally a good-natured book and there's plenty of humour. (However, some of the humour may be lost if you're not familiar with the Irish dialect). Well worth reading.

Laugh out loud funny at times
I am slowly progressing through his work. The one he won a prize for (Paddy Clark Ha Ha) is not the best one in my estimation. The Commitments is his best known, after the succes of the movie. Apparently this one was a movie as well. The book is good. No, correct myself. Very good. Went through it in two days, it was difficult to put down. For non-native speakers the Irish dialect that pops up occasionally can be hard, but in all it is a very easy book to get into. You can just imagine this whole family the book is about. To me father and daughter resemble the ones in the BBC-series the Royle family, one of the best comedies on TV nowadays. The story is fairly easy. Daughter gets pregnant, in catholic Dublin not the best option for an easy life, especially as nobody knows the father and she's not prepared to tell. The lives of the whole family get influenced by it, if they want it or not. But in the end, they're still a family.