Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha: A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOKER PRIZE GEM

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This useful resource is a sample Section A text and questions in the style of AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1. The resource enables students to practice questions that might potentially appear on Paper 1 to build familiarity and confidence with the format and question type. However, that didn't stop the fighting, so Paddy began to seek his brother for emotional support. However, Sinbad chooses to admit that they're fighting and there's nothing that he could do. After this, Paddy losses interest in bullying and being Kevin's friend, so he stayed home. One day, Kevin and Paddy had a fight after school/ In this moment, Paddy realizes that life changes and that he was not going to be the same person he was some time ago. After the fight, he lost his best friend and is the one being bullied. Paddy gets better grades in class and is moved to the "smart" row of the classroom. I wanted to read this after reading my friend Julie’s review for this. As she says about this book “there isn't one out there that captures a childhood, or the perspective from a 10-year-old child, better than this one.”

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I laughed out loud many times, especially at the workings of Paddy's mind, where while going about his school, play and home life, he simultaneously imagined himself as Geronimo, their bikes as horses, himself as George Best the Manchester United super-star, etc. I also got teary at times because, this being Roddy Doyle, we see life in all its complexity. Paddy's ma and da aren't getting along and we see the burden this represents for Paddy and the responsibility he takes on for making things ok for them. The story was assembled from bits of memory - the smell of the desk at school, the private world under the sitting room table - and it arrived in small chunks. An hour one night, or 20 minutes at lunchtime in school - I'd grab the time and write something, often just a sentence or two. I had no plot, just Paddy. I began to see things through his eyes. Adult hands were big, wrinkles were fascinating, ladders were great, disgusting was brilliant, grown-ups were often stupid. I brought the baby to my parents' house and got down on my hunkers in the kitchen, so I could see it as I had when I was 10. (I did this alone; it wasn't a Lion King moment, me holding the infant aloft.) I went up to the attic and took down William the Pirate, Father Damien and the Bells, and A Pictorial History of Soccer. These books became important parts of my book. The novel, chronicling Paddy's internal journey towards maturity, is a bildungsroman, as it centres upon the main character's development. Paddy's growing up is painfully bitter. While the beginning of the book is filled with playful antics, the growing antagonism between his parents and the breaking up of their marriage are evident as the novel moves on. Paddy does not choose his "journey of enlightenment and maturity" [ citation needed]; rather, he is robbed of it when his parents become estranged from one another.

My stomach hurt through many of these stream of consciousness passages of bullying and taunting and I was sure an innocent animal would die at the hands of these brats at some point. Says 10 year old Paddy Clarke about his friends from whom he has decided to move on. He stays awake all night to make sure his Ma and Da are not fighting. He stares at complete darkness (of the iron table) to get over his fear and be grown up. And the change is unhurried, uncomplicated and totally believable from the Point of view of a 10 year old.

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The tangential themes are quite heavy, but the main thrust is the interaction between Paddy and his handful of mates. ALL IN BOY SPEAK. Not just any childhood, and certainly not any in 2014 in a middle-class or affluent neighborhood, where the children can now be found indoors, and in silence, save the hum of their tv or computer. The way Doyle captures the spirit of childhood is spot-on, and through its sequence of vignettes the novel paints a vivid picture of Ireland somewhere around the middle of last Century. The narrative voice feels authentic, and avoids many of the common cliches and tropes of child narrators, like false innocence, or using the child to emotionally manipulate the reader. It is an intelligent perspective. There is a kind of raw humanity at play in these children, untempered by the refinements of adulthood. They are sharp, ruthless, and amoral. Se qualcuno, come me, pensasse che “Paddy Clarke ah ah ah” sia un libro divertente, grazie al quale sorridere e svagarsi dai problemi che ci rincorrono, come volevo fare io leggendolo, si sbaglia. “Paddy Clarke ah ah ah” è un libro molto triste, che rilascia sofferenza, una sofferenza che per noi adulti è la peggiore, quella dei bambini a causa del comportamento degli adulti.

The other important difference between A Portrait of the Artist and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is that Paddy Clarke doesn't grow up. Not all that much, anyway. He is pushed unwillingly towards the adult world. For instance, he realises that the sprawl of the city is eating up the fields he used to play in and thus shrinking his horizons. Also – crucially – he begins to understand that his parents' marriage is breaking down. But he is still only 10 when the book ends. Born in Dublin in 1958, Roddy Doyle was educated by the Christian Brothers and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he read English and Geography.Though I loved it, it seemed familiar - the writing. Somewhere it seemed a stereotypical Irish novel, but then if it is good, surely it redeems itself no?

This was before schools banned teachers and administrators from hitting you on the hands and heads and promoted any such thing as an anti-bullying policy. I was first introduced to Roddy Doyle’s stories when I went to see the movie based on his book The Commitments, and then later on read his book The Guts, which follows the characters in The Commitments, and then following that several years later read The Star Dogs: Beyond the Stars, a short book written for younger readers about the Soviet space dogs. This limitation is perhaps sensible considering how tedious Portrait of the Artist gets when Stephen Dedalus goes to university. All the same, this intimate portrayal of childhood does eventually (forgive me) grow old. It starts to feel like one of those dull conversations drunk people have about their favourite childhood TV characters; like a list of memories which – no matter how well described – feels all too repetitive. There is development here: the sense of doom hanging over Paddy's parents' marriage grows and darkens impressively. All the same, it drifts – and I began to grow bored. The questions take students through a typical Section A experience and help them to focus on language features, sentence forms and writers’ viewpoints ahead of their exams or for revision. Doyle's language employs a register that gives the reader the vivid impression of listening to a ten-year-old Irish boy from the 1960s.

It's fascinating to come across these kinds of notes in second-hand books. I wonder, where did these people live, and what was their relationship? It's too intimate to be just a friend, and the "third Christmas" statement doesn't make sense in a family context. So they must have been in a close relationship of some sort. Did it work out between them? Were they happy together, and did it last? I've read a lot of books, and I can tell you, there isn't one out there that captures a childhood, or the perspective from a 10-year-old child, better than this one. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a story about an Irish lad, named Paddy Clarke, growing up in the 1960's. He runs around with a gang of friends who enjoy terrorizing the streets of Barrytown. He and his friends like to start fires, write their names in wet cement, harass elderly ladies, and wreak havoc on the neighborhood bushes. I started writing Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in February 1991, a few weeks after the birth of my first child. I'd finished The Van, my third novel, the previous November and I remember being told, more than once, that it was the last book I'd write for a long time, until after the baby, and the other babies, had been fattened and educated. They were joking - I think - the friends who announced my retirement. But it worried me. I was a teacher, and now I was a father. But the other definition I'd only been getting the hang of, novelist, was being nudged aside, becoming a hobby or a memory. So, I started Paddy Clarke to prove to myself that I could - that it was permitted. That there was still room in my life for writing. This dreariness surprised me, given that in 1993 when it won the Booker prize, some critics sneered that this book was an easy, "populist" choice (presumably because it sold more copies than any of the others and was written by the author of The Commitments). But it isn't – as was implied – light entertainment. It's a slow and painful lament for the death of childhood – albeit with a few funny bits. It's one of the hardest Booker winners I've encountered. On reflection, I found it sad and sweet and moving. But getting to that stage wasn't always pleasurable.