Funny books

Reading lists

Funny books guaranteed to make you laugh out loud

A host of short story collections photographed against a red background

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12 short story collections to sink into

The Women Behind the Door

‘A brilliant, one-of-a-kind writer’ DAVID NICHOLLS 
 At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, survivor – is finally living her life. 
 A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside. 
 That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” – Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. 
 Over the next few days, as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, they find themselves embracing the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other. 
 ‘His best yet…full of energy and life’ OBSERVER 
 ‘Reading [Paula Spencer’s] voice for the first time sent a pang of recognition through me, followed by love’ ANNE ENRIGHT 
 ‘Storytelling genius’ i PAPER 
 A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2024

The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives

The women in Roddy Doyle’s The Women Behind the Door are…such wonderful company: so funny, so direct, so emotional, so surprising

An emotional and moving portrayal of life shaped by past trauma and domestic violence. Doyle’s ability to capture the subtleties of human emotions and relationships is great. His dialogue is spot-on, it’s funny and moving... I loved it

Paula Spencer [is Doyle’s] endlessly resilient, thoughtful and entirely fictional protagonist… [The Women Behind the Door] is possibly Doyle’s most mature, and certainly his most structurally sophisticated [book]

Genuinely devastating... [Paula is] one of Doyle's most gratifyingly human characters yet. She is full to brim of fierce love... Roddy Doyle is the undisputed master of dialogue. The exchanges between his female characters are a delight, packed tight with authenticity and a humour they wear lightly

Lesser novelists would ‘humanise’ Paula with virtue and much curiosity. But the protagonist Doyle gives us is as proud, inane and flawed as she is compassionate, witty and dignified

I don't often cry at books – music is a different matter – but Roddy Doyle did a number on me with The Women Behind the Door this year. He had just made me laugh when suddenly there was a line...that made me well up

The Booker-winning author brings his storytelling genius to a tale about a family in crisis

This is an incredibly affecting third act that brilliantly captures Paula's internal weather, a light-and-shade of devastation and normality... The past will never be past for Paula, but as the reckonings come, it is beginning to be accommodated at last.

Roddy Doyle’s new novel might be the best thing he has written… it’s full of energy and life, it completes a trilogy to read and reread, and it shows us finally, joyously, how, whatever life throws at Paula Spencer, “she’ll manage. She always has.”

[Paula has] a wild and hilarious narrative voice… [and] a gloriously sardonic sense of humour. The book deals with hard times and dark matters, but there’s always light in the writing

Mr Doyle has made his own the gritty world of modern Dublin

Roddy Doyle – the virtuoso of the inner monologue. The author’s genius takes wing in this novel… The novel remains deep inside Paula’s mind – and brilliantly so. I’m willing to bet that what goes on in most of our heads is beautifully captured here

Roddy Doyle has never lacked ambition, writing complex novels that appear straightforward: heavy on the dialogue, simple in the language, deep in the lives of ordinary working people

A masterclass in dialogue from the bard of the bog ordinary

Roddy Doyle has done the impossible - he has made Paula Spencer even more unforgettable the second time round

Doyle has long been praised for his use of vernacular, dialect and slang: talk is at the heart of his work and this book is no exception, whether via the interiority of thought or the audible babble of jokes, jeers, recrimination, fury

Roddy Doyle's greatest gift has always been for dialogue. He can command the full range of Irish voices and registers... Doyle does not abhor sentimentality. A single sentence, a brief exchange, can raise a laugh and a lump in the throat... The wisdom in Doyle’s writing is the wisdom of this acknowledgement: that to wish to be free of everything that makes one prey to sentimentality and cliché is to wish to be free of what makes fiction possible

Doyle has facility for creating characters out of thin air and making them stick. Not to mention the sly humor, the ability to hew to the fine line between pathos and bathos and write unsentimentally about sad people and situations, and the gift for quicksilver dialogue that can sound like a poetic form of vernacular speech... When you put these together with Doyle’s broad range, you’re left feeling close to dazzled... He imparts a sense of poignancy and glimpses of happiness, of grief and loss and small moments of connection

Doyle is justly renowned for his whip-smart dialogue... And there is beauty and compassion in Mr Doyle's sculpted, spare writing. Among all the banter and gags he manages to articulate feelings that are rarely expressed so fittingly

While recognising that we have all sat po-faced through novels which other people have assured us were hilarious... All I can say is that The Snapper creased me up

Gloriously triumphant... Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha confirms Doyle as the best novelist of his generation

This clever novel sees the return of Roddy Doyle’s beloved protagonist Paula Spencer… a powerful domestic drama

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of twelve acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van and Smile, two collections of short stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, survivor – is finally living her life. 
 
A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside. 
 
That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” – Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. 
 
Over the next few days, as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, they find themselves embracing the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.

Stories

Life Without Children

The exhilarating new short story collection from the Booker Prize-winning author

A quietly devastating collection of short stories that brilliantly portrays the pervasive sense of hopelessness that immobilised us during the dog days of Covid... Silver linings have been hard to find lately, but in Life Without Children Doyle has given us just that

[A] gem of a collection... Roddy Doyle's greatest gift has always been for dialogue. He can command the full range of Irish voices and registers, but he has lately put his gifts to use in painting a picture of characters in...their "third age".

Quietly devastating... Doyle's clipped, plain dialogue shivers with emotion.

Life Without Children...displays Doyle's remarkable talent for conveying the strongest of emotions in the simplest of words and the shortest of sentences... It bristles with quietly sharp insights into the shape of a human life.

There is an immediacy to the stories in Life Without Children, an emotional charge that comes with writing in real time, and an optimism too. In the stripping away of everyday anxieties, the virus reveals what matters most, those qualities that are always at the heart of Doyle's fiction: love and connection.

Moving...[and] beautiful in its brevity.

A treat for fans of the Booker Prize-winning Irish author... the darkness of the stories, Doyle's lyrical style of wit, passion, and occasional obscene outbursts, shine through... wonderfully uplifting.

As always, Doyle has a great ear for the cadences of Dublin speech, finding humour in even the bleakest situations.

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of twelve acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van and Smile, two collections of short stories, and Rory &amp; Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Love and marriage, children and family, death and grief. Life touches everyone the same, but living under lockdown? It changes us alone. 
 
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. 
 
'Life Without Children is boldly exhilarating, with its revelations of quiet love and the sheer charm of the characters' voices' Sunday Times 
 
'Quietly devastating...shivers with emotion' Financial Times 
 
'In the stripping away of everyday anxieties, the virus reveals what matters most, those qualities that are always at the heart of Doyle's fiction: love and connection' Observer 
 
'Moving...and beautiful' Daily Mail

Love

A masterful novel about coming-of-age and finding love in Dublin’s pubs, from the Booker-winning Roddy Doyle

Masterly... A first-rate novel about the different bonds between men and the ineffable mysteries of love.

Doyle is justly renowned for his whip-smart dialogue... And there is beauty and compassion in Mr Doyle's sculpted, spare writing. Among all the banter and gags he manages to articulate feelings that are rarely expressed so fittingly... Love is a reminder that its author is one to treasure.

Fast-paced and deceptively easy to read... Goes down as smoothly as gulps of beer.

Love is altogether spellbinding... The whole book is audacious, richly layered and often comic, but ultimately deeply moving... Move over Socrates and watch an Irish master of dialogue at work.

So perfectly constructed it is hard to believe it is really just about two old school friends getting drunk, and drunker... [Love] seems to bottle what male friendship can be like.

Here is a paean to all things Irish. Fans of [Doyle] will be glad to follow old mates Davy and Joe through a pub crawl that is both elegiac and hilarious.

Sharp, funny... Easy to read, hard to forget.

A praise-song to the Irish pub... The reader is dropped into the familiar, perfect rhythm of Roddy Doyle's effortless dialogue...good humour and camaraderie.

No one does boozy male regret better than Doyle, and he's on typically fluent form in this slow-burn tale of two old friends... A narrative engine that Doyle has perfected over decades.

Roddy Doyle might be our greatest poet of the pub... Love, his 11th novel, makes the pub not just the instrument but the object of affection. In structure, it is a bar crawl; in substance, it is a love letter.

Doyle puts feeling first in this novel by putting it last, in the final pages... In the end, you see that the sacred world of the two friends was lurking in all that preceded this final scene.

[A] witty, satisfying novel about male friendship, aging, and guilt... This one is a winner.

Love by Roddy Doyle weaves memory and fiction as two childhood friends reunite over pints and revisit the vagaries of their youth. Read it if you cry-laughed through The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe and tittered at Steve Coogan's The Trip.

Roddy Doyle has never lacked ambition, writing complex novels that appear straightforward: heavy on the dialogue, simple in the language, deep in the lives of ordinary working people... [Love's] effect is devastating.

Deeply moving... [Doyle is] an exceptionally gifted writer... Wonderful.

Doyle is so adept a writer... [Love is] exhilarating.

Doyle's fast-paced, dialogue-driven style is so real it feels like you're eavesdropping on the conversation. He captures the heartbreak and humour of long-term friendship exceptionally and ends the book with a tenderness that will take your breath away. It's wonderful.

There are frequent flashes of humour, always part of the fabric of Doyle's work, music references galore...and moments of poignant nostalgia, especially about the joy of falling in love for the first time... [Love is] tender, moving.

Roddy Doyle is one of the most recognisable faces - and voices - in Irish literature.

Fizzing dialogue...bawdy humour, nostalgia for times gone by, and a deeply moving ending.

A tangled and mesmeric novel that consists entirely of conversation which is about all the things that don't need to be spoken and the things that can't be said.

[A] tender, funny novel about love, loss and male friendship.

With each new novel, Roddy Doyle’s work grows deeper and more contemplative. Love is a profound examination of friendship, romantic confusion and mortality

'A profound examination of friendship, romantic confusion and mortality' John Boyne 
 
One summer's evening, two men meet up in a Dublin restaurant. Old friends, now married and with grown-up children, their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he has to tell Davy, and Davy a grief he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be. 
 
 As two pints turns to three, then five, Davy and Joe set out to revisit the haunts of their youth. With the ghosts of Dublin entwining around them - the pubs, the parties, the broken hearts and bungled affairs - the men find themselves face-to-face with the realities of friendship.

The Complete Two Pints

Roddy Doyle's complete Two Pints series - collected in paperback for the first time, and now with the Two Pints play script

Funny, provocative and never less than entertaining

Topical and irreverent... Roddy Doyle's impressive comic skills keep the laughter coming

Savagely funny, occasionally inspired, and alomst poetic in their rhythm, speed and economy

Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub... 
 
In 2012, Roddy Doyle showed us the world anew: through the back-and-forth of two Dublin pub-dwellers. They chewed the fat, set the world to rights, slagged each other unmercifully. And along the way, they chased the ebb and flow and stupidity of the year right to the bottom of their pints. 
 
Today, they're still at it - even over Zoom, if needs be. Collected for the first time, here is almost a decade's worth of elections and referendums, births and deaths, football, financial crashes, pandemics and the philosophical questions of life, as told through the wit and warmth of Roddy Doyle's comic genius. 
 
Includes: Two Pints, Two More Pints, Two for the Road - and, for the first time in print, Two Pints: The Play and The Zoom Pints

Charlie Savage

A refreshingly positive take on middle age, it’s optimistic, warm-hearted, blokishly moving and written with a master’s pin-sharp command of humour… a book that’s sure to be picked up and revisited time and time again.

More than comedy or insight, this work has tenderness… It does more than tickle our bellies, it warms our hearts.

Brilliantly funny. Heart-warmingly, vulnerably hilarious in fact. Doyle has crafted Charlie Savage with great care and has imbued him with such depth of character that I can’t imagine a reader finishing the book without loving him, just a little… savour every page because Charlie Savage will enrich your life as long as he is in it.

This portrait of an ordinary man (and one clearly past his best) is by turns hilarious and heartfelt.

Savage is likeable and bumbling and Doyle’s voice is spot on for [this] persona.

Meet Charlie Savage. 
 
Charlie is a middle-aged Dubliner with an indefatigable wife, an exasperated daughter, a drinking buddy who’s realised that he’s been a woman all along … 
 
Compiled here for the first time is a whole year’s worth of Roddy Doyle’s hilarious series for the Irish Independent. Giving a unique voice to the everyday, he draws a portrait of a man – funny, loyal, somewhat bewildered – trying to keep pace with the modern world (if his knees don’t give out first). 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC WRITING 2019 
 
'A delight from start to finish' Irish Mail on Sunday

Two for the Road

Another round of two pints from the ever-brilliant, always hilarious imagination of Roddy Doyle

These short, punchy sketches are wickedly funny, oddly affecting and completely life-affirming.

Very funny... The kind of book that you read in public at your own risk

The next round in the beloved Two Pints series from the ever-brilliant, always hilarious imagination of bestselling author of The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha 
 
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, and referendums storm, but some things - good things - never change. 
 
Inspired by the last five years of news, Roddy Doyle's Two 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.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

A new Vintage Classics edition of Roddy Doyle's beloved prizewinning novel, part of a new set of beautifully presented Irish classics

*A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM* 
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1993 
 
Paddy Clarke is ten years old. 
 
Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke's name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown. Paddy Clarke's heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke hates his brother Francis because that&rsquo;s the rule. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don't love each other, and Paddy wants to understand, but can't.

Gloriously triumphant...confirms Doyle as the best novelist of his generation

It is 1968. Paddy Clarke is ten years old, breathless with discovery. He reads with a child's voraciousness, collecting facts the way adults collect grey hairs and parking tickets. Doyle captures the speech patterns of childhood brilliantly, the weird logic of the incessant questions, the non-sequiturs and wonderments... Like all great comic writers, Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the deepest places of the heart, of love and pain and loss. This is one of the most compelling novels I've read in ages, a triumph of style and perception

Extraordinary technical achievement and emotional force

One of the truest and funniest presentations of juvenile experience in any recent literature

Paula Spencer

Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle returns to one of his greatest characters, Paula Spencer.

Roddy Doyle has done the impossible - he has made Paula Spencer even more unforgettable the second time round

Doyle has created a little masterwork, a gem of persuasive realism

An intoxicating sequel...a phenomenally rewarding read

Paula is a triumphantly original character, and her gently anarchic sense of humour, her ruthless honesty and the bursting sense of fun that permeates the book scotch any hint of sentimentalism. Doyle constructs his set-pieces and orders the narrative with a craft so unobtrustively elegant and clever that it demands a second reading. This is a splendid piece of work

Doyle's writing is as sharp as ever. Sentences snap out from the page, some so short they only contain one word... Paula Spencer has come into her own and Roddy Doyle has gained a comfortable and wholly convincing access into the female mind

This is a magnificent novel...not once does Doyle offer any sentimental cop-out or wallow in bleakness... It's a disciplined piece of writing, full of humour and immense empathy - and what more can you ask than that?

There is an intense pleasure in the reading of this book

A complex and intricate portrait of an unlikely, yet likable, heroine

Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Booker Prize-winning author, Roddy Doyle, returns to one of his greatest characters, Paula Spencer. 
 
 Paula Spencer is turning forty-eight, and hasn’t had a drink for four months and five days. Her youngest children, Jack and Leanne, are still living with her. They're grand kids, but she worries about Leanne. 
 
 Paula still works as a cleaner, but all the others doing the job seem to come from Eastern Europe. You can get a cappuccino in the café and the checkout girls are all Nigerian. Ireland is certainly changing, but then so too is Paula – dry, and determined to put her family back together again. 
 
 ‘A phenomenally rewarding read… Could not be bettered in its depiction of the minutiae of the life of a recovering alcoholic: relentless, trivial, terrified’ Observer

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

From the Booker Prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments comes the story of Paula Spencer: an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after reading.

It is the triumph of this novel that Doyle - entirely without condescension - shows the inner life of this battered housewife to be the same stuff as that of the heroes of the great novels of Europe

In feeling the pulse of a raw Dublin suburb, Doyle is recording a beat that can be recognised all over the world

This new novel is Roddy Doyle's best to date. I cannot recall any writer who has better captured the vulnerability and courage of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage

Even more mesmerizing than his prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood

Paula Spencer may be Doyle's most successful literary creation yet, a tour de force of literary ventriloquism that gives the lie to the old writing workshop canard that a man can't write from the point of view of a woman, let alone in her voice

From the Booker Prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments: the story of an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after reading. 
 
‘He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It’s as simple as that’ 
 
 Paula Spencer is thirty-nine, the mother of four and learning to live without Charlo, her violent, abusive husband. 
 
 Paula’s started drinking more and dreaming more, taking herself back to her contented childhood and audacious teenage years. Everything was better then, not least the music, the soundtrack to her romance with Charlo. As the past floats by and mingles with the present Paula Spencer finds herself coming alive, in all her vulnerability and her strength. 
 
 ‘Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood’ The Times

Smile

The hilarious yet devastating new novel from the Man Booker prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Woman Who Walked into Doors

Roddy Doyle excelled himself… A typically bittersweet novella about a middle-aged man’s memories of his schooldays which pulls the rug shockingly from under the reader’s feet.

A book that made me feel I really was in the presence of a master.

Reading Smile, one is swept along – as in all Doyle’s novels – by the vibrancy of the language, the vivid sense of character and place, but nothing prepares you for the final few pages where, in a twist of imaginative brilliance, everything you have read is turned completely on its head… Smile is beautifully written, and beautifully observed

Terribly moving and even, at times, distressing, while saving its greatest surprise until the end… There is a brave and complex ending to the novel… It will inspire debate but also admiration for the courage of a hugely successful writer who refuses to be predictable and uses the novel to challenge both the reader’s sense of ease and the nature of the form itself.

Smile turns out to be a novel of literary deception and self-deception, of suppression, guilt, fantasy and the deep damage that leaves a mind profoundly disordered… I suspect Smile will become a bestseller

Dramatically pulls the rug from under the reader with a final image not just of one damaged man, but of an impotent country poisoned to the core by a history that it cannot shake off. It left me with goosebumps and, a week on, a sour, sad taste still in my mouth.

The cocktail of dark subject matter and colloquial, humorous dialogue is quintessential Doyle, and this engrossing tale, shot through with pathos, sees him back to his best.

His command of voice is absolutely sure, his dialogue authentic and the Ireland his characters inhabit — still a patchwork of fifties pietism and noughties cosmopolitanism — completely available to his and the reader’s understanding… An absorbing and expertly told story.

Doyle is one of the best writers of dialogue we have, using it with humour and drama.

His novels fizz with demotic zing, comic phrasing and the back-and-forth of Irish chat.

Classic Roddy Doyle, but with a shocking twist… The novel rewinds leisurely through the previous 40 years of Victor’s life. Schooldays are vicious, terrifying and strangely thrilling… Doyle’s recreation of 1970s and 1980s Dublin is engaging in itself, even as you’re wondering what went wrong in Victor’s life… But then comes the devastating and comfortless finale, in which Doyle conjures up a mind-bending narrative swerve to jolt the novel out of everyday realism… By the end, the book’s title takes on the air of a taunt as we’re left with an unutterably bleak picture of institutional abuse, entirely without hope.

So the great part of the novel is a finely observed and recorded slice of unsatisfactory life… Then, in an astonishing last chapter, when Victor and Fitzpatrick seem to come drunkenly and violently together, Doyle turns the novel on its head, clarifying Victor’s memories of school and calling everything we thought we had learned about him into question. The ending is a daring tour-de-force.

Anyone who has been to a boy’s Catholic school – even years after the decline of corporal punishment and institutionalised sexual abuse that the book makes its focal point – will be vividly reminded. Few writers are as consistently good as Doyle at conjuring this specific childhood mental geography… Dialogue, narrative pacing, humour and marvelous set pieces are immaculately marshalled throughout Smile.

Smile is brisk-paced and funny with the chatty storytelling that is a hallmark of Doyle’s writing. But here the familiar heads into dark and unexpected territory as the secrets of Victor’s troubled psyche are revealed.

All of this is told in Doyle’s easy, pared down prose and demotic dialogue that just sings. He remains the best kind of populist author; accessible and ambitious.

Roddy Doyle has a kind of genius for the literary selfie, for projecting himself and his generation onto the page. His novels, including his latest, Smile, are a brilliant depiction of the condition of men such as he – liberal, self-made Dubliners of is generation and his self-deprecating character – he’s approaching 60. His male conversations in pubs… are masterly in that they sound like transcripts of real men talking… There’s genius in his banality.

Smile’s grimy, unsentimental truth-telling is overturned at the end by a devastating narrative twist… It actually serves to magnify, not obscure, this hugely moving tale of a ravaged life.

No one is better than Doyle at capturing the casual rudeness, hidden affection and dark wit of pub banter… What Roddy Doyle is attempting here is something much more ambitious, a book which, when you come to the final page, makes you gasp and turn straight back to the beginning… What is certain is that this is a novel which isn’t afraid to examine the consequences of abuse; what a long and permanent stain it may cast over a man’s entire life. Nor does it shy away from how a mind unhinged can secure itself to celebrity in search of self-esteem and meaning.

Roddy Doyle’s ostensibly simplistic, effortless style mines the depths of human emotion without recourse to any pretension, literary or otherwise. He is the Beatles of Irish literature. His dialogue is tuneful to a fault – capturing not only the wit, but also the woeful banality of daily chat. I read The Van at an early age and took it from there; his familiar and instantly engaging style is music to my ears. His latest novel, Smile, is a great pleasure to read. Here again his genius is apparent, this time on the obscure functioning of male friendships.

Smile shapes up as a bittersweet story, typically well-observed and smartly-voiced, of a middle-aged, moderately screwed-up guy whose separation and solitude sends him on a journey through memory towards the sufferings of his childhood. Then, for all the assurance that nothing “supernatural” has happened, the floorboards of social realism suddenly give way beneath our feet. Shockingly, we’re in an uncanny place that might have been furnished by Henry James at his spookiest.

This book is a brutal confrontation with reality… The plot twist in the book’s final pages is genuinely shocking… But with it the book is elevated to a brilliant and deeply moving level. Finally, this is a compelling exploration of the utter devastation of institutional abuse.

Smile is an undoubtedly fine novel, displaying Doyle’s famed mastery of dialogue and ventriloquist-like ability to assume the identities of his characters… The novel’s strength lies in Doyle’s precise yet impressionistic evocation of the workings of memory and trauma. Childhood trauma is rendered in a manner that is at once harshly exact and vexingly evasive… Doyle’s prose is both impeccable and confounding, leading the reader into folly as much as clarification… A timely and stunningly poignant novel wrought with great wit and pathos.

This is an unsettling and ultimately bleak examination of institutionalised abuse in Ireland, a subject which offers very little to smile about.

Achingly sad and ruefully perceptive, exquisitely balancing anger with sympathy.

With a queasily gripping, insidiously sad narrative, and an ending that completely rewires everything you thought you knew, Doyle delivers through the paralysed character of Victor a devastating verdict on present-day Ireland, still imprisoned by an ugly past.

There’s a moment right at the start of Roddy Doyle’s new book, Smile, that will make you shiver – dark undercurrents under a banal exterior… More experimental in form, and with less humour than you might expect from Doyle, Smile is the 59-year-old author’s attempt to shake us out of complacency… For my part, the book’s triumph rests on Doyle’s ability to reflect how Victor’s experience of abuse has unmoored him from the people around him.

In a sharply observed novel, Doyle explores memory, relationships and sanity.

Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humour and the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before.

The final pages of the novel are shocking, and they turn everything preceding it on its head. It’s testament to the power of Doyle’s writing that the ending is deeply moving, and so very sad.

One that stuck with me for a long, long time after I had finished it… This is one of my favourite books of the year so far. How the story ultimately plays out left me satisfied, cold and off-balance. A rare thing.

A surprise. It’s unsettling and evocative, but not what you’d expect from the beloved author… The wit and sharp dialogue are classic Doyle, but the dark, unexpected ending will linger long in the mind. A brilliant read.

Who writes the lives, hopes, dreams, sorrows and failures of ordinary people with greater insight, empathy and humanity than Roddy Doyle?... It’s as profound, funny, sad and shocking as anything Roddy has ever written.

So cleverly written we are caught up in the narrative and the final reveal is deeply disturbing. Doyle has again proved himself an author who can create the sense of time and place that takes the reader into the backstreet bars of Dublin and shows the dangerous undertow of life in Ireland.

This is a performance few writers could carry off: a novel constructed entirely from bar stool chatter and scraps of memory. But you can’t turn away. It’s like watching a building collapse in slow motion… Doyle has perfected a narrative technique that’s elliptical without feeling coy.

[Doyle] experiments with time, adding an edgy dream-like quality to the writing… There is no shortage of the author’s trademark dialogue where the men chat about their favourite topics, basically pilfering of Doyle’s own Two Pints Facebook wheeze… Smile is a precise perceptive study of male vulnerability and quietly portrays the stunted life of a lonely, damaged man.

It’s a captivating story that has all the features his readers love him for: razor-sharp dialogue, humour and warm evocations.

In contrast to the manic colloquial energy of Doyle’s early work, this novel, his eleventh, feels moody and spare – a meditation on how wisdom wounds.

An unforgettable journey into Ireland’s darkest past.

A welcome return to form by the master of bittersweet black comedy, dialogue and drama… A profoundly moving, occasionally disturbing and important read.

A profound examination of the stories we tell other people – and ourselves.

Fans of Doyle's previous bestsellers, including The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, will not be disappointed.

Doyle captures the febrile atmosphere of being at school perfectly

Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s pub for a pint, a slow one. 
 
One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick. 
 
Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers.He prompts other memories too – of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who says the unsayable on the radio. 
 
But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular Brother, that he cannot control - and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.

Dead Man Talking

Pat had been best friends with Joe Murphy since they were kids. But years ago they had a fight. A big one, and they haven't spoken since --- till the day before Joe's funeral. 
 
What? On the day before his funeral Joe would be dead, wouldn't he? 
 
Yes, he would... 
 
Roddy Doyle's first book for the Quick Reads programme to support adult literacy is fast, funny and just a tiny bit spooky.

Two More Pints

Following on Two Pints, another hilarious book on everything that matters from the brilliant Roddy Doyle.

Savagely funny, occasionally inspired, and almost poetic in their rhythm, speed and economy.

Topical and irreverent… In some hands, this might seem contrived, but Doyle’s impressive comic skills keep the laughter coming.

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 comic dialogues Doyle’s drinkers ponder: 
- a topless Kate Middleton 
- Barack and Michelle Obama (‘fuckin’ gorgeous’) 
- 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 Mandela (‘he should never have left the Four Tops’), 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?’

The Van

'A hilarious and hugely affectionate novel' Independent on Sunday 
 
By the bestselling author of The Commitments, now a long-running West End stage show. 
 
'The musical we've been waiting for... So good I almost wept' Sunday Times

A wonderfully funny book, that crackles and spits like fat in the fryer. It is also very touching...fine entertainment

The last novel of his superb trilogy about the Rabbitte family of North Dublin...often hilarious, always enthralling and - this really is the case - unputdownable

Roddy Doyle is a phenomenon... The Van is not just a very funny book, it is also faultless comic writing

There have been no novels published this year which are as funny, as understanding about the triumphs and indignities of family life, or as brave in touching upon the raw nerves of the male psyche

Jimmy Rabbitte is unemployed and rapidly running out of money. His best friend Bimbo has been made redundant at the company where he has worked for many years. The two old friends are out of luck and out of options. That is, until Bimbo finds a dilapidated 'chipper van' and the pair decide to go into business... 
 
By the bestselling author of The Commitments and The Snapper, The Van is a tender tale of male friendship, swimming in grease and stained with ketchup.

The Commitments

The bestselling book behind the long-running West End stage show. 
 
'The musical we've been waiting for... So good I almost wept' Sunday Times 
 
'Hugely enjoyable... Wonderfully funny' Daily Telegraph

A contender for the funniest debut of the year...young, feisty, funky, rude, unpretentious and great fun

An Irish version of The Blues Brothers...authentic and brilliantly funny

An absurd comedy of the commonplace...a charming, truthful and immensely funny story which leaves you gasping for more

One of my favourite trilogies ever, nobody makes hard times as funny as Irish author Roddy Doyle… Beloved classics… The stories will be a balm to your bruised soul.

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. 
 
The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, brilliantly coached by Joey 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from the parish hall to the steps of the studio door. 
 
But can The Commitments live up to their name? 
 
The bestselling book behind the long-running West End stage show. 
 
'Unstoppable fun. A big-hearted, big-night out' The Times

The Snapper

Sharon Rabbitte is expecting a baby, but as her pregnancy forces the ramshackle Rabbitte family to pull together, will she reveal who is the father? 
 
By the bestselling author of The Commitments, now a long-running West End stage show. 
 
'The musical we've been waiting for... So good I almost wept' Sunday Times

A superb creation, exploding with cheerful chauvinism and black Celtic humour... You finish the book, hungry for more

While recognising that we have all sat po-faced through novels which other people have assured us are hilarious... all I can say is that The Snapper creased me up

Not since I first delved into Flann O'Brian have I so consistently laughed out loud while reading a book

Meet the Rabbitte family, motley bunch of loveable ne'er-do-wells whose everyday purgatory is rich with hangovers, dogshit and dirty dishes. When the older sister announces her pregnancy, the family are forced to rally together and discover the strangeness of intimacy. 
 
 But the question remains: which friend of the family is the father of Sharon's child? 
 
By the bestselling author of The Commitments, now a long-running West End stage show. 
 
'Unstoppable fun. A big-hearted, big-night out' The Times

The Guts

Jimmy Rabbitte of The Commitments returns in a new novel by Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle 
 
Longlisted for the 2015 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

A visceral tragicomedy – as raw and as funny as anything [Doyle’s] written.

Remarkable, relevant and, surprisingly for a book that’s ostensibly about cancer, joyful.

This is Doyle back in Barrytown and on top form, especially at the festival which closes a glorious book.

The Guts has life, and heart, and jokes.

The novel is probably the most contemplative that Doyle has written — as a meditation on the importance of family, it is at times almost unbearably moving.

Unchanged is Doyle’s miraculous ability to serve up dialogue that fizzes with great, often quite rude jokes – but never at the expense of the emotions lying behind them.

As one does with old friends, you leap right back into the conversation as if you’ve never been apart... It’s got a bittersweet humour all its own.

The novel is rich in sentiment and episodes conveying sentiment.

Smart, sly, raucous, outrageous and tender The Guts will have you cheering for Jimmy and his family and if you’re not already a fan of Doyle’s writing will surely make you one.

The biggest joy is Doyle's deftness with dialogue.

Roddy Doyle

Praise for Jeeves Again

Reviews for JEEVES AGAIN

Full of fizz and variety

A multi-voiced tribute to a literary great . . . jolly good fun

Reviews for JEEVES AGAIN

Full of fizz and variety

A multi-voiced tribute to a literary great . . . jolly good fun

Reviews for JEEVES AGAIN

Full of fizz and variety

A multi-voiced tribute to a literary great . . . jolly good fun

Books by Roddy Doyle

Articles featuring Roddy Doyle

Funny books guaranteed to make you laugh out loud

12 short story collections to sink into

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