Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha: A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM

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However, that didn't stop the fighting, so Paddy began to seek his brother for emotional support. However, Sinbad chooses to admit that they're fighting and there's nothing that he could do. After this, Paddy losses interest in bullying and being Kevin's friend, so he stayed home. The questions take students through a typical Section A experience and help them to focus on language features, sentence forms and writers’ viewpoints ahead of their exams or for revision.

Ireland sounds damned good and dreary, and I am rethinking my desire to visit. I hate priests, nuns, and the Catholic Church with a vibrating Day-Glo orange passion. I'm beginning to hate all the fools and cruels who dare to become parents in Ireland, too. All the cheery Irish that exist appear to have moved here and taken up writing about the badness of Irish childhoods. My stomach hurt through many of these stream of consciousness passages of bullying and taunting and I was sure an innocent animal would die at the hands of these brats at some point. I am now into my final three Booker winners, and this one left me somewhat in two minds. I had never read Doyle before and always had a feeling that I wouldn't enjoy it that much. One day, Kevin is harassing some boys, when Paddy notices his parents arguing, and at first, he thought he could fix their problems. So, Paddy began applying himself in school work so that he could stay in the kitchen, studying with his parents. He thought that his presence between his parents would end fighting.The break-up of Paddy's parents' marriage isn't based on memory. My parents seemed happy, and still do. I'm not sure why I made Paddy watch his parents fight - I don't remember. Maybe I was one of the boys in Lord of the Flies, throwing stones at a smaller boy, waiting to be stopped. But no one stopped me, and I hit him. Or maybe I just knew a good story when I tripped over one. Fiction can be a cruel business. People sometimes ask me what happened to Paddy. I tell them he's an MEP. Their faces always tell me the same thing: they wish he was 10 again, and miserable. Doyle's language employs a register that gives the reader the vivid impression of listening to a ten-year-old Irish boy from the 1960s. Born in Dublin in 1958, Roddy Doyle was educated by the Christian Brothers and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Geography. Nothing more powerfully shapes the experience of reading a novel than the way it is divided - the regular break between one chapter and the next. How long do you read for? How do you know where you can stop for a while? When is it time to switch the lights off? In most novels, a chapter is not just a narrative unit, it is the sign of an accord between author and reader. An absence of chapters seems an absence of structure, a failure of narrative strategy. He is also one of 15 Irish writers who contributed to the 'serial novel' Yeats is Dead! (2001), a murder story set in contemporary Dublin, the proceeds of which were given to Amnesty International. His book, Rory & Ita (2002), a mixture of oral history and family reminiscence, tells the story of his parents' lives. He published a collection of short stories , The Deportees, in 2007, and a second, Bullfighting, in 2011.

On the down side, the narrative voice is so unpretentious that it verges on the monotonous, and for most of the book Paddy is just not a very likeable protagonist. It is told in a somewhat random stream of consciousness which perhaps reflects the way childhood memories work. Paddy is trying to figure out the world, whether it is the war in the newspaper headlines or the changes in his neighborhood. Things are changing, especially in his home. He realizes his parents' arguments might evolve into a change that terrifies him. If only he can get them to stop "distract them, make them laugh - anything". He tries staying awake all night because if he could, it would prevent their fighting. Perhaps if he stood still."If I moved it would start up again, I was allowed to breathe, that was all." He loves his Mum. He loves his Da. Why don't they love each other? It's fascinating to come across these kinds of notes in second-hand books. I wonder, where did these people live, and what was their relationship? It's too intimate to be just a friend, and the "third Christmas" statement doesn't make sense in a family context. So they must have been in a close relationship of some sort. Did it work out between them? Were they happy together, and did it last? Not just any childhood, and certainly not any in 2014 in a middle-class or affluent neighborhood, where the children can now be found indoors, and in silence, save the hum of their tv or computer. I was first introduced to Roddy Doyle’s stories when I went to see the movie based on his book The Commitments, and then later on read his book The Guts, which follows the characters in The Commitments, and then following that several years later read The Star Dogs: Beyond the Stars, a short book written for younger readers about the Soviet space dogs.Doyle’s sharp and gritty realism comes to the fore again in The Snapper, which depicts the Rabbitte family plunged into the dilemma of an unmarried daughter’s pregnancy. A more subtle novel than its predecessor, The Snapper shows how the typical Irish urban family functions in a largely post-Catholic, post-nationalist Ireland. Rather than expelling young Sharon or sending for the priest as an earlier generation would have done, Jimmy Sr. and Veronica Rabbitte manage to absorb the news and eventually the new arrival – the ‘snapper’ of the title – into their daily life. But it is the deepening relationship between Sharon and her father that provides a primary focus, as Doyle explores the changing gender roles of contemporary Ireland. Through the softening and maturing of Jimmy Sr., he analyses in particular the nature of modern Irish masculinity, a subject followed through to the crisis of male confidence depicted in the final novel of the sequence, The Van. Doyle’s interest in family life is a mainstay of his fiction. The Rabbittes, in the trilogy, are both distinct and archetypal; intimately delineated and at the same time, fully representative of the contemporary Irish family unit. But Doyle’s positive presentation of their humour and resilience gives way, in his next work, to a darker picture of family relationships. The way Doyle captures the spirit of childhood is spot-on, and through its sequence of vignettes the novel paints a vivid picture of Ireland somewhere around the middle of last Century. The narrative voice feels authentic, and avoids many of the common cliches and tropes of child narrators, like false innocence, or using the child to emotionally manipulate the reader. It is an intelligent perspective. There is a kind of raw humanity at play in these children, untempered by the refinements of adulthood. They are sharp, ruthless, and amoral.

I've read a lot of books, and I can tell you, there isn't one out there that captures a childhood, or the perspective from a 10-year-old child, better than this one. Paddy turns on Kevin and fights him after school one day. Paddy realizes this is a monumental change in the hierarchy, and comments that things will never be the same again. He loses his friends and is often teased. He gains better grades in the classroom and moves up to the front of the "smartest" row since he spends so much time in the kitchen studying. But that shouldn't be taken as a criticism. A Portrait of the Artist is a fine book after all and to have written something that approaches so close is damn impressive. Nor should it be taken to suggest that Doyle slavishly adheres to the Joyce model. There's no doubting that he has his own vision and take. The 10-year-old narrator points out all sorts of details that belong to him alone. He tells us about the varnish at the front of the prefab buildings in his school that "was all flaky because of the sun: you could peel it off". He tells us all about Sinbad, his brother, and what brotherhood means to him, and how strange it can be to be so close and so removed – especially when he does odd things like twirl a rodent around by its tail: "I stood near Sinbad; he was my brother and he was holding a dead rat in his hand." He shows us about the daft thoughts running through his head: "Confucius he say, go to bed with itchy hole, wake up in the morning with smelly finger." He talks us through the process of puking up Angel Delight, strawberry and milk and sums up the after effect wonderfully: "I felt better, sturdier." This is definitely Paddy Clarke's world, not Stephen Dedalus's. Doyle brings it to life vividly and with infectious humour. This useful resource is a sample Section A text and questions in the style of AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1. The resource enables students to practice questions that might potentially appear on Paper 1 to build familiarity and confidence with the format and question type.

And I did forget to mention the word cute. That should certainly be mentioned. It's all so cute, and it's about children. Wonderful. [And I know this might sound flat.:] Paddy resorts to various tactics such as staying up all night and listening at his parent's bedroom door to try to keep the peace. His realizes that his efforts are all for naught when he witnesses his da hitting his ma one night when he goes to get a drink of water in the kitchen. From that point on, he knows that they will live without their da, but things should be better around the house, or he can only hope.

I love Paddy Clarke. He is so sympathetic. For me that says everything. He just makes me love him. Want to hug him almost. (Expect he wouldn't want me to do it (even if we would exist in the same world). Cause life is so hard. Even for a 10-year-old boy. The boys that play together in the Irish suburbs of the 60s are so hard on each other. But kids are, whether they're boys or girls, whenever and wherever they live. Good I haven't had to endure that. The kids cruelty. Not much at least. You can't get to me, not really. "Paddy Clarke, Paddy Clarke, has no da, ha ha ha!" Paddy Clarke discovering the world. That's what it's about. Everything in the book. I don't find any such compelling reason in this book. I don't find anything compelling at all in this book, as a matter of fact. Books written in the voice of a child had best use that technique for a reason...the child's perspective becomes wearing unless there is some very, very compelling narrative reason to make us follow a kid around without wanting to scream blue murder after a while. But childhood isn’t always filled with magic, dreams don’t always come true, and life isn’t always fair. Parents sometimes fight, and children aren’t shielded from the worries of life. The story was assembled from bits of memory - the smell of the desk at school, the private world under the sitting room table - and it arrived in small chunks. An hour one night, or 20 minutes at lunchtime in school - I'd grab the time and write something, often just a sentence or two. I had no plot, just Paddy. I began to see things through his eyes. Adult hands were big, wrinkles were fascinating, ladders were great, disgusting was brilliant, grown-ups were often stupid. I brought the baby to my parents' house and got down on my hunkers in the kitchen, so I could see it as I had when I was 10. (I did this alone; it wasn't a Lion King moment, me holding the infant aloft.) I went up to the attic and took down William the Pirate, Father Damien and the Bells, and A Pictorial History of Soccer. These books became important parts of my book.Paddy is right beside Kevin in harassing the other boys until he realizes strange things are going on between his parents. He notices them arguing, and his first reaction is to fix it himself and make his parents happy. He works extra long and hard on his spelling so that he can remain in the kitchen between his parents. He believes his presence will end the fighting. If he can make them laugh right before he departs for bed, he believes the night will end happily. When the fighting between his parents does not stop, Paddy pulls into himself. His pranks become fewer and farther between. He seeks out the comfort and emotional support of Sinbad. Sinbad has also heard the fighting at night, and has pulled into himself and won't let Paddy in. Sinbad chooses to try and dismiss the fighting as anything other than what it really is. Paddy resents his ability to dismiss it. Somehow, Doyle brings all these sides of childhood to life, the pain, the joy, the dreams of childhood years looking to those years of adulthood where we believe we can choose our own destiny with the limitations of childhood removed, and leave behind the memories that haunt us. Booker Prize Winner Paddy Clarke HA HA HA by Roddy Doyle was a bit disappointing, as I expected so much more. Doyle is the author of books such as The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van. In fact, The Van is one of the funniest books I’ve read. A few weeks ago I was infuriated by 'Hideous Kinky,' a novel purporting to be narrated by a five year old girl. Linguistically all wrong, the story fell down due to these discrepancies. Happily, 'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha,' told from the POV of a ten year old boy, is a masterclass of perception and imaginative writing. This is a boy's voice speaking about the things within his frame of reference, staccato musings that centre on family and its comforts and agonies, the hierarchy of friends and school, and the world that is the village he calls home, a world that shrinks as the book goes on, with play fields disappearing and poor houses springing up. This concoction is laced with an unceasing list of salient facts, all repeated in the boy's voice with the curious wonder of youth. Structurally, the loose chronology is often eschewed by the meandering connections of memory in Paddy's head, although the increasing preoccupation with the health of his parents' marriage cuts through the tales of boyish banter and scrapes, revealing beyond the laughter and joys of childhood a sadness at the core.