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The triumphant conclusion to the trilogy that began with A Star Called Henry
Roddy Doyle's irrepressible Irish rebel Henry Smart is back-and he is not mellowing with age. Saved from death in California's Monument Valley by none other than Henry Fonda, he ends up in Hollywood collaborating with legendary director John Ford on a script based on his life. Returning to Ireland in 1951 to film The Quiet Man- which to Henry's consternation has been completely sentimentalized-he severs his relationship with Ford.
His career in film over, Henry settles into a quiet life in a village north of Dublin, where he finds work as a caretaker for a boys' school and 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. After being injured in a political bombing in Dublin in 1974, Henry is profiled in the newspaper and suddenly the secret of his rebel past is out. Henry is a national hero. Or are his troubles just beginning?
Raucous, colorful, epic, and full of intrigue and incident, The Dead Republic is also a moving love story-the magnificent final act in the life of one of Roddy Doyle's most unforgettable characters.
…if you don't already know Henry, The Dead Republic is an excellent place to meet him—because it's the best of Doyle's trilogy…As Henry has aged, his creator has also matured. And here he has avoided crowd-pleasing formulas to create an original and amusing octogenarian double agent, composing a thoughtful book about a sometimes thoughtless political process.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Chris Vaszary
reviewed The Dead Republic on January 05, 2015
The Dead Republic
The final installment in Doyle's trilogy is a bit of a mess.
For starters, the inclusion of the Ford material at the beginning of the book doesn't allow Doyle's minimalist, speedy prose and plot to pull the reader in at the outset. This means that the first 100 pages or so are a bit of a slog, even though they set up Henry as a metafictional protagonist (even more so than in the other two volumes). He's the creator and "star" of his own life.
Existentialist? No.
Metafictional? Yes.
In the first part, Henry and Ford (the famous filmmaker) attempt to make a film about Henry's life. But - get this - even the script secretary is named "Meta."
The second part is much more compelling. Henry returns to Ireland and through his eyes, we see the second half of the 20th century enfold. Of course, Henry manages to get mixed up in all the political complexities and violence of the time - and Doyle's text covers a lot of historical ground in about 200 pages.
Doyle's sentences serve as a history lesson of sorts. But because the lesson is so short, it's superficial and doesn't really get at the complexities of the age.
It also makes Henry seem less human...less realistic. I know that Doyle wants to present Henry as a "white whale" of sorts - a symbol onto which anyone with any political or ideological perspective can attach meaning. And this allows him to demonstrate the futility and pointlessness of the "Troubles."
Doyle also includes some awkward magical realism, the allegorical significance of which is all too simplistic.
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