SOURCE: Fitzgerald, Penelope. “Fried Nappy.” London Review of Books 13, no. 17 (12 September 1991): 16.

In the following review, Fitzgerald maintains that The Van showcases Doyle's sharp wit and ear for dialogue.

This is the third and last of Roddy Doyle's novels about the Rabbitte family of Barrymount, an unprepossessing council estate suburb of North Dublin, much like Kilbarrack, where Doyle was born himself. Barrymount, although by no means a foul rag-and-bone shop, is a place for dreams to start. In The Commitments young Jimmy Rabbitte decides that Ireland is ready for soul music and gets his group together. Just as there seems to be a chance with a recording company they desert him one by one. In The Snapper Sharon Rabbitte, drunk in the car park at the Soccer Club Christmas do, gets pregnant by that fucking old eejit Mister Burgess—the father, what's more, of a friend of hers. Still...