In the opening chapter of The Dead Republic, the last novel in The Final Roundup trilogy, the narrator, Henry Smart, gives us a handy summary of the story so far. With it comes a sharp reminder of just how improbable much of the plotting has been. ‘I found my wife again in Chicago,’ recalls Henry, ‘when I broke into a house with Louis Armstrong . . . I crawled into the desert to die. I died. I came back from the dead when Henry Fonda pissed on me.’
Roddy Doyle, of course, once specialised in more straightforward tales of working-class Dubliners, whether comic (The Van), tragic (The Woman Who Walked into Doors) or a bit of both (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha). Then, in 1999, he suddenly struck out in a new direction. A Star Called Henry, the first volume of The Final Roundup, did retain his resolutely non-fancy writing style.
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