The Snapper Book

Actual rating 3.5 stars.

This is the second instalment in Doyle's The Barrytown trilogy, following on from The Commitments. The focus has shifted to the former protagonist's father and elder sister, and details another generation of life inside suburban Ireland.

Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. But the juicy gossip around town isn't her unwed status but concerns over who the father is. Is it her best friend's balding, overweight father like is rumoured? Or the one-night-stand Sharon claims it is? And why does it matter either way? For Sharon it matters little. For her father, it is the world.

Despite dealing with quite a dense subject matter, the tone of this book managed to remain light-hearted. As before, there was a hilarious use of dialogue that made this both a fast-paced and entertaining read. This was used to ease the darker subject matter in to the narrative, and the reader remains unaware in the shift of tone until it has actually occurred.

There were some truly tender moments, as the father/daughter relationship was explored, with an additional insight to 1980's urban life, where societal opinion was markedly different from today. This made it a markedly more complex novel than the former trilogy's instalment and gave it the emotional depth I was desiring from this series. I can't wait to see where The Van takes us, next.