Snapper - Hardcover

Doyle, Roddy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 043620004X ISBN 13: 9780436200045

Publisher: Random House UK, 1997

Synopsis

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 is 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?


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author

Roddy Doyle is an internationally bestselling writer. His first three novels—The Commitments, The Snapper, and the 1991 Booker Prize finalist The Van—are known as The Barrytown Trilogy. He is also the author of the novels Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993 Booker Prize winner), The Woman Who Walked into Doors, and A Star Called Henry, and a non-fiction book about his parents, Rory & Ita. Doyle has also written for the stage and the screen: the plays Brownbread, War, Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner, and The Woman Who Walked Into Doors; the film adaptations of The Commitments )as co-writer), The Snapper, and The Van; When Brendan Met Trudy (an original screenplay); the four-part television series Family for the BBC; and the television play Hell for Leather. Roddy Doyle has also written the children's books The Giggler Treatment, Rover Saves Christmas, and The Meanwhile Adventures and contributed to a variety of publications including The New Yorker magazine and several anthologies. He lives in Dublin.

From Kirkus Reviews

A warm, frank, and very funny account of family life and pregnancy as Irish writer Doyle (The Commitments, 1989; also see below) continues the saga of the endearing working-class Rabbitte family of Barrytown, Dublin. A playwright as well as novelist, Doyle tells the story of 19- year-old Sharon Rabbitte's surprise pregnancy almost entirely in dialogue. In less gifted hands, the experience would be claustrophobic, but with Doyle the reader becomes the undetected fly on the wall able to relish the unguarded talk as Sharon plucks up courage to relay the news first to her mom and dad (Veronica and Jimmy, Sr.) and her siblings, and then to the toughest group--her girlfriends--who, ribald and skeptical, want to know everything. But Sharon isn't telling who the father of her ``snapper'' is, which naturally fuels speculation, especially when the father of one of her friends insists he's responsible. Sharon tries to deflect the gossip by claiming that while drunk she'd been seduced by a nameless Spanish sailor, ``but she knew this as well: everyone would prefer to believe that she'd got off with Mr. Burgess. It was a bigger piece of scandal and better gas.'' For a while, Jimmy, Sr., feels his friends at the pub are laughing at him, and he blames Sharon; but Jimmy, a wonderfully complex and good man, realizes he's being unfair and, to make up, concentrates on Sharon's pregnancy in earnest. From library books, he learns as much about sex as pregnancy--information that he shares with his pub pals while keeping close tabs on Sharon's condition: ``She was getting really tired of her dad; all his questions--he was becoming a right pain in the neck.'' There are the usual ups and downs of family life, but when Sharon sees her baby ``and about as Spanish- looking as--she didn't care. She was gorgeous. And hers.'' Life and pregnancy as it really is: scatological, unsentimental, and, in spite of it all, with lots to laugh at. Not a false note anywhere. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House UK
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 043620004X
• ISBN 13: 9780436200045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160