Customer Reviews

The Dead Republic

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I was initially disappointed with "The Dead Republic" after I finished it because it didn't have the grab of "A Star Called Henry". Henry has always been a hard character to like, and this is more so in Doyle's new novel. But, I've let the book settle a bit. There are overtones throughout that render "The Dead Republic" unique and a fitting end point to the trilogy.

By the mid to late 20th century, Henry Smart has now become a much-admired and sentimental reminder of the Easter Rising of 1916. The director, John Ford, uses Henry as an IRA consultant to develop "The Quiet Man" (yes, the film with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara) in part, because Ford has the emerald-isle view of the Ireland he never lived and Smart represents. Then, in the 1970's and 1980's, the IRA keeps Smart in their midst for their purposes, despite the fact that some of the things Smart is credited for during the Irish Civil War, he never did. (No spoilers here). It's all become mired in history.

I quite liked "The Dead Republic" for these reasons. Roddy Doyle hits the reader hard with the false and delusional sentiments of the Ireland-that-never-was and reminds us what it was to be Irish, and living in poverty, particularly during the Troubles.

Roddy Doyle was at his best in his previous books. I loved the first book of the trilogy: "A Star Called Henry;" the second book was Ok but it kept going downhill. The end of the book was better but all the John Wayne and Hollywood stuff left me cold. Doyle's earlier books, especially "Paddy Clark, Ha Ha" were memorable reads for me, but this last book left me flat.

Thirty-five years after Henry Smart became one of the heroes of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, Henry is in Hollywood, where he is an "IRA consultant" to director John Ford, who plans to make a film about Henry's life. The making of this film and its aftermath become a major focus of this final novel in the "The Last Round-Up" trilogy which author Roddy Doyle had intended to reflect Ireland's history from its independence to the present day. A STAR CALLED HENRY, the first of the series, establishes Henry's background as a poverty-stricken child and the reasons for his willingness to put his life on the line in the General Post Office takeover in 1916, when he was only fourteen, and follows him through the War for Independence from 1919 - 1922. The second book of the trilogy, OH, PLAY THAT THING, takes Henry, on the lam from mobsters in Ireland in 1922, to Chicago and eventually Hollywood.

At the outset of this third novel, Henry meets director John Ford, who begins talks with him about a film he plans to make about Henry's life--"The Quiet Man." Ford wants to celebrate Ireland's beauty (and sell more tickets) by removing all references to the War for Independence and the IRA. "No one gets shot in the back. No one gets shot at all," Ford declares, though this is not the Ireland that Henry has seen up close and personal as an IRA assassin. When Henry abandons the project, Ford goes on to make "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara--a sentimental romance celebrating the Ireland that Ford and many other Irish-Americans want to remember. In Part II, Henry, now fifty, is in Ireland, working as a caretaker at a school for underprivileged boys and living a quiet life, until he is eventually "called" again by the IRA. For Henry, "[Ireland] was [now] worse than it had been when [he] was young...The country was already dead."

Though the dialogue is, as always, bright and lively, the novel and the trilogy itself are structurally confused, the emotional triumph of the Easter Rising from the first novel lost in a Hollywoodized version of reality in the second novel and in much of the third. Doyle does attempt to bring the novel back to its revolutionary roots by reconnecting Henry Smart with the Provos and the disastrous bombings of Dublin by the Ulster Defense Force in 1974, then bringing it further up to date with the elections held in 1980, as imprisoned republicans, like Bobby Sands, imprisoned in Long Kesh, go on a hunger strike. This concluding section is the most vibrant part of the novel.

Those who are unfamiliar with the preceding two novels will have a difficult time understanding who the characters are, and as the action cuts back and forth in time without warning, even someone familiar with the trilogy will sometimes be hard pressed to figure out what is happening. Henry's return to Ireland does not result in much greater enlightenment regarding the purpose of the trilogy and the reasons for its many changes of direction. The lives of the Irish revolutionaries become lost in the scenery, as Henry Smart and his legacy go out, not with a bang but a whimper. Mary Whipple

A Star Called Henry (The Last Roundup)
Oh, Play That Thing (Last Roundup)
The Woman Who Walked into Doors
Paula Spencer
The Barrytown Trilogy

Roddy Doyle has finally given us this third novel in the trilogy "The Last Roundup";and it even surpasses what I had expected or hoped for.
I you haven't read the first,"A Star Called Henry" and the second "Oh,Play That Thing";I strongly suggest you read them both,in order,or you will be lost completely in this third novel;as the author continually refers back to them.
Doyle 'in this trilogy ,tells Ireland's history of the 20th Century,through the life of Henry Smart.Henry was born in 1901 and was barely old enough to get involved in the Irish Uprising of 1916-1922.He had to flee for his life to America and didn't return to Ireland until 1951,when he was hired as a consultant by Ford when he was making the movie "The Quiet Man".
Though old,frail and with a wooden leg;Henry meets up with others he was involved with in the Uprising,many friends as well as enemies,a long lost first wife and daughter,and even gets involved with the IRA and all, during the "Troubles" in the 1980's.
The story continues up to the present day,and even after the first arrival of the English in the Norman Invasion,nearly 800 years ago,the Irish have continued to struggle to free themselves of the cruel and brutal oppression of the British and reclaim their country.
The story of this struggle has been told in countless songs and ballads over the years;but none better than by Thomas Osborne Davis (1814-1845)in the mid-1840's.He was a founder of an Irish movement whose aim was an Independent Ireland.

"And then I prayed I yet might
see
Our fetters rent in twain,And Ireland,long a province,
be
A Nation once again!"

The novel ends at the present time,with Henry at the age of 108.It is only 6 years until the 100th Anniversary of the 1916 Uprising and Ireland has yet to attain its dream of Ireland being "A Nation Once Again";and free of the British;but with the passing of every day the hopes and dreams of the Irish people looks better.
As for all the patriots who fought and died to free Ireland an make her "A Nation Once Again";the generations shall remember them and call them blessed .In the meantime,whenever the Irish gather,this song is sung and might as well be their National Anthem.

This continues where "Oh, Play That Thing" left off, with Henry Smart rescued by John Ford in the desert. Henry turns adviser for Ford, as he's determined to make an Irish film celebrating the technicolor version of the brawling and romancing old country. Henry, despite his reservations, spends the period around the late Forties, paralleling his own lifespan, fighting against and giving in to Ford. Despite contrived and melodramatic touches--common here as with previous volumes in "The Last Roundup" trilogy--Doyle offers deft insights, via Ford's direction, into how reality transforms into two hours of efficient storytelling on screen.

As with "Oh, Play" with the "timeless" quality of Louis Armstrong's musical choices, Doyle uses his insights into how entertainment shifts audiences into an altered reaction to emotion, and here, to Irish stereotypes.

John Ford's vision for "The Quiet Man" becomes another of his stories, when "America was right," and Ford keeps his secret for Henry: America's "full of folks who'll never be American," who will look at such depictions of America, and one day Ireland, as mythic victories against Apaches, Commies, or "bad palefaces." Henry eventually drifts off, discontented, and "stepping out of time" he expresses himself in confused time segments, as Doyle shuffles chronology around a few years here and there.

This slows the action, as in "Oh, Play"'s final sections, and as with that novel (see my review), the pace congeals and the tone darkens. As with the first volume, "A Star Called Henry" (also reviewed by me), it's a saga with very few moments of levity, if the same black humor, tart dialogue, and bitter observations of Henry Smart, our sour, aging, rambling narrator. I confess again that a dramatic "fluke"--following two or three in "Oh, Play,"--defies belief, but such is fiction, as Henry in vast America as in smaller Ireland manages to find who he searches for.

Henry realizes his complicity in this manufacturing of an Ireland different than that he'd imagined in peacetime, and this segues in part two into another sort of consulting for a reborn IRA. They use him as a way to invent their own version of a Gaelic, socialist, and 32-County nation whose rhetoric convinces few, but whose manipulation of violence and the response to violence brings him in the 1970s and 1980s into compromise, as his life and those of his loved ones are threatened by blackmail. The IRA advocates as in Henry's early career with its first incarnation the imposition of force--this time to bomb Northern Ireland into republican definitions of freedom.

Defeat as victory, hatred as the only way to a united Ireland, a lure for another generation's young men: "The victim's wheezy triumph." The 1981 hunger strikes eerily recall the desperation of 1920 for his generation fighting the British, and each other. Henry is pressured to inform by both sides, now the Irish police against Irish republicans. "I changed the tense from past to present and informed on people long dead."

He is paraded about by the IRA as their link to a legitimate early republic, that he fought for in 1916-22. He's a "holy relic," an "ancient activist," a "talisman," and a "living saint." Those few familiar with not only Gerry Adams but also Tom Maguire will recognize characters "inspired" by diehard republicans. Their bearded leader tells Henry, as the end seems near for the 1990s IRA: "We've battered all other definitions" of Irishness "into submission."

The highlights of this grim story remained Doyle's insights via Henry into the redirection of Irish possibilities as the postwar progress bloomed before stalling into junkies and violence with the Troubles, and then the "peace process" which had taken so much conniving and hatred to install.

It ends, weak and staggering with Henry at 108, as the sly, devious republicans continue to press their exclusive rendering of who's Irish as the only acceptable answer, nearly a century after Henry's rebels fought in 1916 for a somewhat more inspired vision of equality. For Henry and Doyle's other characters, it's a sobering scenario, and the trilogy continues its descent down to where it started, full of misunderstanding, fear, and betrayal. It's clever often in Doyle's sober take on mythic ways Ireland is made, but it moves at a measured pace and with few moments of peace to relieve the relentless darkness that surrounds most of Henry's days. It rewards those who know this period in Irish history and who have read volumes one and two, but it is not cheerful reading, and it is intricate, at times halting action, as devious republicans never stop outguessing our Henry. This wears out the novel's energy.

Perhaps fittingly, not for the propulsion of popular fiction but the more mordant eye cast on Doyle's recent Ireland,; it's not the song-filled, epic film, revolutionary posing that many view as his homeland, any more than Ford's "Quiet Man." This harsh lesson deepens the novel's impact, but it also weighs its heavy message down.

A star called Henry was amazing, but I feel sad that I read the other 2 after. It's supposed to be a trillogy, but read the 1st book only. Then Henry remains a legendary historical figure.

This is the final episode in the Henry Smart trilogy, the earlier books being A Star Called Henry (The Last Roundup) and Oh, Play That Thing (Volume 2 of The Last Roundup). I loved the first volume, with the excitement and fast pace of the young Henry as he survives and connives in the smutty Dublin of the Easter uprising and the Irish Civil War.

The intervening years have been hard on Henry who lost a leg in the 2nd volume thanks to a train. The Dead Republic starts off with Henry's rescue and abuse at the hands of John Ford. The abuse happening as Ford uses Henry's intimate knowledge of Ireland during the war to create the script for The Quiet Man (Collector's Edition). If you've seen this movie, you know that it represents Ireland in the same way that Ford's movies often show the US, with all the grime and grittiness polished away to an often simpler version of real life.

After walking away from Ford, Henry settles in a quiet village and becomes a gardener. He's running away from the ghosts of his earlier life in Ireland. But eventually some of them find him and he becomes a tool of some wing of the IRA, and the Irish special branch - part of the Irish police force. He encounters the violence of Northern Ireland when bombs exploded in Dublin, and Doyle does a great job of portraying the general feeling of decay in the 1970s and 80s in Ireland.

In the last part of the book, an increasingly older and less capable Henry watches old friends die as his life descends into extreme old age. I found this part of the book a great deal harder to read than any part of A Star Called Henry.

I'd recommend the book if you've read any other part of the trilogy. If you only read this volume you'll get a great perspective of Ireland's maturation from poverty into middle-class respectability while rocked by 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland.

If you are a Roddy Doyle fan, you won't be disappointed. I've read darn near everything he's published, and this was a pleasure, as are they all. If you haven't read the first two installments of the trilogy, I'm not sure it will make much sense, or that you'll get the connection between Henry and Mrs. Smart. Best to start with a Star Called Henry if that's the case.