Mid-life reading: "The Guts" by Roddy Doyle

Exactly as I was supposed to, I picked this book up in Waterstones in Nottingham on a quick impulse, thinking: "I'll give that one a go". The cover gives you'll the clues: Roddy Doyle, the author; not one, but two references to The Commitments, and its protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte; as well as the life-affirming and triumphant citation from the Irish Post.

Why didn't they just put something like: this book is for 50 year-old men who twenty plus years ago loved Roddy Doyle's Barrytown novels but who are bit older now and need a dose of humorous reassurance  about that fact, not to mention about actually pretty nasty things that are starting to impinge on their lives, like bowel cancer?

Well, enter your (still, just) 50 year-old guy, who, in a considerably pre-blog era, devoured the three joyous Barrytown Trilogy novels - The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van - as well as the successive Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, which, although undoubtedly less joyous, remain among the most powerful and memorable works of fiction I have ever read. I stuck with Doyle for one more, A Star Called Henry, but than drifted away, as I think many of Doyle's readers did. Perhaps it was he who drifted away.

But who more than me, and my like, to snaffle a copy of The Guts, with its promise of a nostalgic return to Barrytown and curiosity about how our fictional contemporaries are ageing?

So, now, having completed the book, do I feel like a victim of a marketer's ploy and the need of an author to cash in on past glories? 

In a word, no. 

The Guts perhaps does not have the crazed energy of the The Commitments but it does have the humour, the sense of place and the terrible language of its predecessor combined with, yes, a degree of subtlety and grounded wisdom which would not have been right for the younger Jimmy Rabbitte. 


Jimmy was the manic youth who put together Dublin's first white soul band, The Commitments, in the earlier novel. Now 47, married to the delightful Aoife (not in The Commitments), with four lively teenage children and a couple of semi-accidental dogs, Jimmy has done OK. He thrived through Ireland's Celtic Tiger boom years, and unlike many in the middle-class suburb he now lives in, has survived its brutal recession relatively well, albeit at the price of promoting "Celtic Rock", ("Riverdance for Nazis" as he drolly calls it) as part of his role in a music promotion business he originally set up with Aoife, but a few years ago presciently sold to his now boss, Noeleen. The problem (as well as much of the solution) is, of course, in the guts, the bowel cancer with which Jimmy has been diagnosed before the novel opens and news of which he is breaking to his dad, Jimmy Sr (of Van fame), in the pub in the book's opening scene. 

The cancer, which we know to be of the scary-but-treatable sort, is the core narrative thread of the novel, but one which never dominates the story, which weaves together sub-plots major and minor: family tribulations, a reconciliation with long-lost brother Les, a brief affair with the still-desirable Imelda Quirke (always the most fanciable of the Commitments' backing singers), reunions with old friends, and new crazy/inspired ventures in the music business. What brings most of what we could call a loosely structured narrative together is Jimmy's confrontation of, well, being older. Yes, let's call it a mid-life crisis. But he faces it, on the whole, in an upbeat, good-humoured way, screwing up a few things pretty badly, getting others seriously right, but through it all grounded in one crucial fact: his wife and his family love him, and he loves his wife and his family. They all show it in true Barrytown style, of course, and much of is really good about this book lies in the subtlety of how the strong bonds between these people emerge in what is not said in the most verbose of worlds, in three-word text messages, and the tone of voice in which the words "I'm grand" are said.

I read somewhere that Roddy Doyle only really writes about one thing: love. Maybe, but it is not in the Julian Barnes way; with Doyle you catch it on the edge of the mayhem, detect it in the banter, sense it in the foolery, and feel it in the way you know the characters will be all right, even when they're not all right. 

So it's fine by me if Roddy Doyle wants to revisit the Rabbittes. The nostalgia isn't quite the same as the original - is it ever? - but the revisit was worth the trip and left this oul' lad suitably humoured and reassured. Do you need to be an oul' lad to enjoy this? Probably not, but I'm sure it helps.