SOURCE: Rourke, Mary. “When Irish Eyes Were Smiling, Laughing, and Crying.” Los Angeles Times (15 November 2002): E31.

In the following review, Rourke praises Doyle's portrayal of his family history in Rory & Ita, noting that Rory and Ita—Doyle's parents—make entertaining and compelling subjects.

Rory Doyle is one of the funniest men on Earth, but who would ever know if his novelist son Roddy hadn't written Rory & Ita? The younger Doyle is best known for his fiction about the Irish, most recently A Star Called Henry (1998), based on the Easter Uprising of 1916.

In Rory & Ita, Doyle goes straight to the facts in what is, among other things, a portrait of life in Ireland from about 1930 on. His parents are the eyewitnesses; in alternating chapters, Rory and Ita do all the talking. Readers must be patient with this arrangement. No dramatic action or engaging insight by a narrator opens the...