Amelia Stein

Listen to the Event...

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 magazine and several anthologies. He lives in Dublin.

In The Dead Republic, Doyle picks up where the second book of the trilogy, Oh, Play That Thing (2004)  left off: saved from death in California's Monument Valley by none other than Henry Fonda, Henry is befriended by legendary director John Ford. Ford, enamored with Henry, tells him he would like to film his life. After several years spent in Los Angeles working on the script, Henry flies back to Ireland in 1951 for the filming of The Quiet Man. Much to his consternation, the film has been completely sentimentalized and in no way resembles his own story. He severs ties with Ford, but not before nearly strangling him to death.

Henry eventually settles into a quiet life in a small village north of Dublin, where he finds work as a caretaker for a boy's school. Here, he begins to see the new Ireland unfolding—it's not perfect, but there's electricity and sick boys are cared for. He takes up with a woman named Missus O'Kelly, whom he suspects (but is not quite sure) may be his long-lost wife, the legendary Miss O'Shea. One day, on a visit to Dublin in 1974, a bomb planted by the Ulster Volunteer Force goes off on a street that Henry is walking down. He survives, but is gravely injured. When a newspaper article is published about him, the secret of his rebel past is out: he is Henry Smart again, national hero. New “friends” want to meet him now, though, and Henry quickly finds himself in a compromised position.

Written with Doyle's trademark wit, lyricism and passion, readers will no doubt embrace this moving conclusion to his ambitious trilogy that paired history and fiction and introduced an unforgettable character.