The Guts

2015 Longlist

Jimmy Rabbitte is back.

The man who invented The Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids … and bowel cancer. He isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be.

Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle – his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of The Commitments – Outspan, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. He is reunited with his long-lost brother and learns to play the trumpet…

This warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life. It climaxes in one of the great passages in Roddy Doyle’s fiction: four middle-aged men at Ireland’s hottest rock festival watching Jimmy’s son Marvin’s band Moanin’ At Midnight pretending to be Bulgarian and playing a song called ‘I’m Going to Hell’ that apparently hasn’t been heard since 1932…

Why? You’ll have to read The Guts to find out.

Winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of ten acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van, two collections of short stories, Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents, and most recently, Two Pints, a collection of dialogues. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. The Commitments was adapted into a hit film in the 1990s and is now a West End musical.

Librarian’s Comments

A welcome return to the world of The Commitments. Character and dialogue are excellent.