The Barrytown Trilogy is a collection of three novels - The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van - which all follow members of the Rabbitte family in their lives in a small town outside of Dublin. There are still the humorous bits but it's the struggle to maintain self-respect in this particular culture and the slow death of a friendship. The third takes place a few years later and the times have gone downhill. Ignoring the inadequate treatment of that whole situation, this one is crass and hilarious. The pregnancy itself is treated a bit briefly, more a prop for the development of the father character. But the way the father is drawn and colored in! Very sweet. The second - my favorite - focuses on the dad as he deals with his eldest daughter's out-of-wedlock pregnancy and seemingly just a glancing sweep of the daughter. The first is this chuckling wind-up, not really about the family but following the eldest son who forms a soul band out of the whitest of whities that falls apart due to personalities. Why is that interesting at all? I struggle to write beyond mere summarizations so I get overexcited when I think I recognize the craft in writing. Each book has a different tone, which was interesting to me since the bulk of the story is conveyed in oddly formatted dialogue. This trilogy centers around the Rabbitte family. Lots of Irish slang and written to capture some of the accent.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |