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Rory and Ita

Name: Rory and Ita
Author: Roddy Doyle
ISBN: 9781440673801

by Roddy Doyle

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Overview

Rory Doyle and Ita Bolger were both born in the 1920s, not long after the Irish rebellion. Their lives span most of the twentieth century, which saw Ireland transformed and the lives of its inhabitants dramatically changed. Roddy Doyle's oral history of his own parents shows what daily life was really like in Ireland, especially in the first half of the last century. The experiences here are almost quintessentially Irish. Their own parents were involved in politics (Ita's father as a young man had guns hidden under his bed; Rory's father--who makes a cameo appearance in A Star Called Henry--drove a tram and performed some discreet sabotage). Both Rory and Ita spent time in the city and in the countryside; both were conscious of the political changes going on around them; both went to work when rather young; and as newlyweds they moved into a house in the suburb that was so new it didn't yet have a road. There is a strong sense here of the emotional lives of two individuals: the joys, large and small; the hardships that you just dealt with; the inevitable losses and grief. By turns poignant, wry, and hilarious, sweet but never sentimental, Rory and Ita is an account of the moments that make up a life, offering a refreshingly real glimpse of a world becoming modern, independent, and--at the same time, ironically--an object of nostalgia.

Synopsis

Combining Rory and Ita’s marvelous storytelling ability with Roddy Doyle’s legendary skill in illuminating ordinary experience, Rory & Ita is a book of tremendous warmth and humanity. Roddy Doyle’s first non-fiction book tells—largely in their own words—the story of his parents’ lives. They remember every detail of their Dublin childhoods—the people, the politics, idyllic times in the Wexford countryside for Ita, Rory’s apprenticeship as a printer. By the time they put down a deposit of two hundred pounds for a house in Kilbarrack, Rory was working as a compositor at the Irish Independent. By the time the first of their four children was born, he’d become a teacher at the School of Printing in Dublin. Kilbarrack began to change, and Ireland too. Through their eyes we see the intensely Catholic society of their youth being transformed into the vibrant, modern Ireland of today. “A moving and delightful book.”—Independent “As with all stories, the beauty and wonderment of [Rory and Ita’s story] comes from its being told so well.”—The Vancouver Sun “Alive with acuity and spare, punchy prose. . . . Always readable, engaging and revealing. . . . A brave and tender piece of work.”—Irish Times

About the Author, Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. His first novel, The Commitments, was published to great acclaim in 1987 and made into a very successful film by Alan Parker. The Snapper was published in 1990 and has also been made into a film, directed by Stephen Frears. His third novel, The Van, was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize. Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha won the 1993 Booker Prize and A Star Called Henry was voted a Best Book of ’99 by The Globe and Mail. Roddy Doyle lives in Dublin.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Behind the author of novels like A Star Called Henry and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha are two quintessentially Irish parents named Rory and Ita Doyle. Roddy Doyle's earthy and affectionate reminiscence of his parents conveys his wry humor and emphatic eccentricity.

Publishers Weekly

While Doyle is a well-regarded screenwriter (The Snapper; The Commitments) and novelist (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha), here he seems to have done little more than hold the microphone, as this is actually his parents' book. Such nonintervention might be wonderful, were his folks entertaining raconteurs or at least people with rich experiences to relate-but alas, Ita and Rory are neither. While the publisher bills their memories as an "oral history" of the "quintessential twentieth-century Irish experience," the account is little more than a lackluster story of a mundane couple whose families were neither rich nor poor. Both attended school, dated and married, bought a house, raised a family, retired and then moved on to coping with old age. They rarely concerned themselves with anyone outside their village and extended family, only discovering the rest of the world when Rory retired and they traveled. Such insularity occasionally produces endearingly innocent remarks, such as newlywed Rory's exclamation when he learns Ita's pregnant: "I didn't say, `How did that happen?' but I had only a vague idea." Now and then, the account offers insight into lifestyle changes over a single generation, as when Ita reflects on her 1940s girlhood and realizes there "was no such thing as teenagers, so it was up to yourself how you got on between the ages of thirteen and twenty." As such gems are buried under many pages of smalltown gossip, Doyle's fans may wish the talented writer had chosen a different format for celebrating his parents' story. Photos. (On sale Nov. 11) Forecast: Based on Doyle's popular and critical acclaim, this book should be a trendy holiday choice for literary readers, and it will be reviewed widely. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The Booker Prize-winner and the Irish working-class's Marcel Proust (A Star Called Henry, 1999, etc.) offers a nonfiction account of his parents' reminiscences "about the people they were before they were my parents," continuing through WWII and into their senior years. And what a book it might have been. But fans will search in vain through this rambling collection of anecdotal recollections for Doyle's hilariously unsentimental portraits of street-corner romantics, dizzy dreamers, and righteous fools. Instead of crafting a dual biography using his novelist's talent for wry observation and revealing detail, Doyle lets his parents talk-and talk and talk-about themselves in long, discursive passages unrelieved by description or analysis, supplemented by black-and-white photos and occasional annotations. Granted, Roderick "Rory" Doyle, a newspaper compositor and later a teacher of the printer's trade, and Ita Bolger, secretary in a medical school's pathology department, have their son's gift for a good story. Their memories of early hardships, childhood chums, dark houses overflowing with relatives, the purchases they made with the savings from their first jobs (a briar pipe, lavender soap), and their courtship (he was a little drunk during their first dance; she grew to admire him as they took long walks around Dublin) are likable and sympathetic, and there will be no dry eyes after reading that Ita mourns her son Anthony (who died the day after he was born) by refusing ever again to pray to the saint she named him for. Though Doyle says, in a preface, that he left out many of the stories about him and his siblings, what's missing from this family album are the deeper glimpses intocharacter that might be found in those less comforting, ignoble incidents that a loving son may not have wanted to put into print. A sweet, inoffensive, rambling oral history of a writer's respectable, hard-working, warmly dignified parents. Marriage never sounded quite so good. (28 b&w photos)