Description

*A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM*
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1993

Paddy Clarke is ten years old.

Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke’s name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown. Paddy Clarke’s heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke hates his brother Francis because that’s the rule. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don’t love each other, and Paddy wants to understand, but can’t.

Publisher Review

Funny, warm and enriching. -- Alan Davies * Daily Express * Funny, warm and enriching. -- Alan Davies * Daily Express * Truthful, hilarious, painfully sad * Spectator * Gloriously triumphant...confirms Doyle as the best novelist of his generation * Literary Review * It is 1968. Paddy Clarke is ten years old, breathless with discovery. He reads with a child's voraciousness, collecting facts the way adults collect grey hairs and parking tickets. Doyle captures the speech patterns of childhood brilliantly, the weird logic of the incessant questions, the non-sequiturs and wonderments... Like all great comic writers, Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the deepest places of the heart, of love and pain and loss. This is one of the most compelling novels I've read in ages, a triumph of style and perception * Irish Times * Extraordinary technical achievement and emotional force -- Gillian Beer One of the truest and funniest presentations of juvenile experience in any recent literature -- Mick Imlah * Independent * Brimming with sadness, but full of fun * Sunday Times *