SOURCE: Elie, Paul. “Ireland without Tears.” Commonweal 126, no. 20 (19 November 1999): 57-8.

In the following review, Elie commends Doyle's prose in A Star Called Henry but notes that the novel's characterizations seem superficial and less than memorable.

The early novels of Roddy Doyle were recognizable simply by the way they were laid out in type: long kite-strings of dialogue running down the pages, one- and two-word tags of speech set off by dashes and surrounded by gales of white space. The books were so slim, so light, so casually done, so effortlessly enjoyable, that at first it was hard to believe a big international publisher had troubled to print and bind them and pay smartly dressed graduates of fancy American colleges to write letters and make phone calls on their behalf. And yet The Commitments, about some Irish kids in the sixties who formed an after-school soul band, had the...