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A Star Called Henry (The last roundup)
 
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A Star Called Henry (The last roundup) (Paperback)

by Roddy Doyle (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (1 Sep 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099284480
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099284482
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 2.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 24,622 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #6 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > D > Doyle, Roddy
    #49 in  Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards > Lad Lit

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
The habit of murder becomes a hard one to break; the hero of Roddy Doyle's novel of the Irish War of Independence, like his father before him, kills to order and kills in cold blood. Where his father was simply the one-legged bouncer at a brothel, whose employers used him for any killing that needs to be done, Henry has motives. Growing up on the street, taught his letters by James Connolly, he believes in not just Irish freedom, but workers' revolution. He learns the hard way that his pious middle-class masters do not have this in mind.

A Star Called Henry--passionate, angry, darkly and wildly comic--has something in it to offend everybody. His stirring, deeply anti-romantic, account of the siege of the Dublin Post Office during the Easter Rising is remarkable, but hardly less so is his account of life on the Dublin docks, or Henry's treks around the countryside as one of Michael Collins' hard men, teaching guerrilla warfare to dairy farmers and clerks. The love affair between Henry and his equally blood-thirsty teacher and wife Miss O'Shea is sweet and touching. The first volume of a trilogy, this is a radical departure for Doyle, and a stunning success. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
Born in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.

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Customer Reviews

53 Reviews
5 star:
 (34)
4 star:
 (10)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (53 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a breathtaking and ambitious departure for Doyle, 3 Sep 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: A Star Called Henry (Hardcover)
This book is a breathtaking and ambitious departure for Roddy Doyle - it is an account of Ireland at the time of republican revolution, told through the eyes of one of Dublin's teeming citizens, who rises - literally - from the gutter, to become one of Michael Collins boys - a cop-killer for the IRA.

Not only an account of the birth of the Irish Republic, it is the tale of a one legged whorehouse doorkeeper, and childhood and life of his son, Henry Smart, who finds employment with the IRA not because of burning political ideals but as a means of survival and possible fame.

The sheer depth of the descriptive narrative is impressive. Like Graham Swift's Waterland, it serves as a historical document as well as a work of fiction - this reader came away from the novel entertained and educated, and from a British point of view, shocked at the subjugation of Empire.

Tragically comic, Doyle exhibits much of the pithy, down to earth, humour of human tragedy that served him so well in his earlier work. It would have been easy to write a biased account of the embattled Irish fighting a united war against the evil English - but Doyle concentrates on the experiences of Henry, who finds that all sides have the capacity for double-crossing and murder.

A Star Called Henry marks the maturity of Roddy Doyles' writing, and will doubtless be classed as one of the great works of Irish literature.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Darkly poetic and bueatifully written., 5 Dec 2001
By A Customer
Dealing with poverty, violence and a period of dark history I could not have imagine that I would enjoy this book as much as I did. Henry Smart is a violent man who bears no evil intent, just a need for survival and purpose.
Passages in which he talks of his mother, brother and father are warm and affectionate despite the sadness of circumstances and show the book at it's best. The passage in which Henry talks about his mother's name is nothing short of wonderful.
If you're looking for light entertainment read something else. If you're looking for literature and a book which presents you with a perspective you had never considered, read this.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A work of genius, 2 Feb 2005
By Dee-Dee (Ely, Cambridgeshire) - See all my reviews
Get this: Henry's father is a one-legged, peg-legged, hard-drinking hitman who runs errands for the Madame of a brothel. We first meet him lying drunk in a ditch, we follow him later through Dublin's sewers and thence into many a darkened room where we watch while he perpetrates his pitiless executions. Oh, and meanwhile he's deserted his poor wife with a brood of scabby hungry children in a slum. Hardly a sympathetic character, right? Wrong. When it was clear he was in danger of his life, I was so worried I was biting my nails and shouting "Look behind you!" This is not some shoddy sensationalist writer with a gruesome plot, it's Roddy Doyle. You understand Henry Smart Senior, you know his how's & why's. His most monstrous actions are comprehensible - and therefore forgivable. You agonize over him.

And he's just one of a host of peripheral characters, (don't even get me started on Henry's poor little brother Victor or we'll be here all night). Henry himself is one of the best fictional creations of modern times. AND all of this, Henry's childhood story, is just one part of a multi-layered book whose greatest achievement is something else entirely. 'A Star Called Henry' is also the story of Irish uprising and Republicanism in the 1910s. And it is here, with its dizzying insight into real, petty human motives, that the book finally excels - and leaves us to question the whole concept of heroism. It is an extraordinary novel. It will haunt you while you read it, and hang around your head for a long long time after you think you've put it down.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars one that you'l not forget
i read this book when i was eighteen i am now twenty six, i have since read hundreds of books but a star called henry is the one that i'v never forgot. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Magda Trainor

5.0 out of 5 stars Fiction or Fact?
I loved this book but I don't buy a lot of what has been written about it.

Firstly, it is not a work of historical record, it is a work of fiction and, whilst it may... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mick Read

5.0 out of 5 stars COULDN'T AGREE MORE!
All the positive reviews are right. This is a first-class book and Doyle probably is Ireland's greatest living author. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Scribbler

5.0 out of 5 stars A tall tale of Irish rebellion
If you believe soldiers fight for their country, or for the vision of their leaders, this is the book to challenge your assumptions. Read more
Published 12 months ago by John Holland

5.0 out of 5 stars a star called henry
fantastic, beutiful, funny, gripping and moving. one of my most favourite books. i recommend it to everyone.
brilliant!!!!!!!!!
Published 14 months ago by C. Wilde

5.0 out of 5 stars An All Time Favourite
This is one of the best books I've ever read. The opening few chapters I will never, ever forget. Mr Doyle manages to bring Irish History alive and I felt as though I was there on... Read more
Published on 24 April 2007 by Love Books

5.0 out of 5 stars So that's why they fight
Henry Smart is a sorrowful figure. A robber, a beggar a doorman and destined to be caught up in the "struggle" as so many working class Irishmen and women are. Read more
Published on 5 Jan 2007 by James Parker -Rothchilds

5.0 out of 5 stars A Star indeed. Brilliant. Don't miss this one.
This book is very different from the others, and absolutely brilliant. Doyle abandoned an excellent established, very successful, style and format to create a work that stands as... Read more
Published on 20 Jan 2006 by Martin Greenwood

4.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful novel about revolutionary Dublin and Ireland.
Roddy Doyle understands Dubliners, and paints very affectionate if 'warts and all' pictures of the city and its people. It's obvious that he loves the place. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2006

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Novel
This was the first of Roddy Doyle's books that I read. I thought it contained one of the most authentic and gritty accounts of slum survival in modern literature. Read more
Published on 12 April 2005 by Nicole O'Brien

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