It is not voice that makes Roddy Doyle’s novels run, though ever since his first — The Commitments, a comic 1987 tale of a gang of poor Dublin kids trying to form an American-style soul band — the Irish novelist has garnered praise for giving realistic modern voice to the poverty-stricken characters of urban Ireland. Neither is it narrative — Doyle’s high-speed, almost drunken lurch through storytelling — though his 1993 Booker Prize-winner, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, was celebrated for its ten-year-old boy’s narration of the break-up of his parents’ marriage.
What really makes a Roddy Doyle novel run is bounce, the mad joy and insane hope with which his working-class characters face a joyless world their creator has stacked hopelessly against them. And when the bounce runs down — as it has in his new book, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (Viking, 226 pages, $ 22.95) — what remains is only voice and narrative, which prove ever less compelling as his horrifying account of an abused and alcoholic Irish housewife gradually tires out its readers.
