It was Missis Quigley’s gate she was always looking out the window but she never did anything. Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with a stick. As it is, this is one of the most honest, funny and often heartbreaking depictions of what it means to be a child on the cusp of adulthood that I have ever read, presenting the reader with an almost stream of consciousness that powerfully captures that childhood combination of exhilaration, cruelty and confusion.įrom the opening lines it is clear we are in the presence of a child Roddy Doyle was also ten in 1968 and it would be easy to see the book as autobiographical – however it would also do it a disservice to suggest that Doyle has simply a good memory for what being ten felt like. The clever twist though, it that Paddy Clarke is not telling us his story with hindsight, but as if he were still 10 years old and as if this tenth year might never end. Set, like his previous novels, in the fictional north Dublin suburb of Barrytown, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a boy’s first hand account of growing up in 1968 at the age of 10. As it isn’t a plot driven novel, I don’t think this is a problem, but want to give readers the choice of skimming this review if necessary! *DISCLAIMER* My review contains an overview of the entire plot of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, some of which may be considered a spoiler. In Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, I was stunned again, this time by his ability to so believably recreate the voice of a ten-year old boy. Last year I read Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked in to Doors and was stunned by his ability to so vividly inhabit the voice of a battered woman.

Paddy ha ha ha