The Guts

The Guts

by RoddyDoyle (Author)

Synopsis

Jimmy Rabbitte is back. The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids ...and bowel cancer. He isn't dying, he thinks, but he might be. Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle - his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments - Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. He is reunited with his long-lost brother and learns to play the trumpet. This warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life. It climaxes in one of the great passages in Roddy Doyle's fiction: four middle-aged men at Ireland's hottest rock festival watching Jimmy's son Marvin's band Moanin' At Midnight pretending to be Bulgarian and playing a song called 'I'm Going to Hell' that apparently hasn't been heard since 1932. Why? You'll have to read The Guts to find out. It is the winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year.

$3.29

Save:$13.23 (80%)

Quantity

1 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 08 Aug 2013

ISBN 10: 0224098322
ISBN 13: 9780224098328
Book Overview: Jimmy Rabbitte returns in a wonderful new novel by the author of The Commitments - now a major West End Musical. Winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year

Media Reviews
A visceral tragicomedy - as raw and as funny as anything [Doyle's] written. -- Olivia Cole GQ Remarkable, relevant and, surprisingly for a book that's ostensibly about cancer, joyful. -- Kevin Maher The Times Life-affirming and trimphant Irish Post A fond, comic treat. Sunday Times This is Doyle back in Barrytown and on top form, especially at the festival which closes a glorious book. -- Harry Ritchie Daily Mail
Author Bio
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of ten acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van, two collections of short stories, Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents, and most recently, Two Pints, a collection of dialogues. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. The Commitments was adapted into a hit film in the 1990s and is now a West End musical.