I.S.P BLOG #6

THE SNAPPER by Roddy Doyle

There is good reason as to why The Snapper became a major film. People enjoy reading about a motley bunch of lovable ne'er-do-wells, and screen play adapters enjoy how little work they have to do.

There is 100% believable dialogue in this chapter. We hear less from the narrator than from the characters and that adds to the strength of this book's finest quality; the narration is there only to tell us what cannot be shown and being able to have your characters reveal the story on their own, as it does in real life, is a great technique because along the way we learn the who the characters as well. The voice of the narrator does not have anything special to say, it has the local as the rest of the cast and speaks succinctly and avoids "she said and he said" which allows the reader to watch what the characters are doing.

We know where we are, that is what is told to us, the dialogue is what does so much more. The direct speech between the characters is the most authentic out of any of the novels I studied for the I.S.P. The drive comes from how Doyle reveals the necessary information, the talk between the family leaves readers eager to overhear the 'gossip.' The tone is always light-hearted and that makes this book a pleasure to read; Jimmy Rabbitte is concerned about his daughter's pregnancy, but he isn't going to lose his mind over it.

Each character is created in the same way we learn about what is going on. For the size of this first section, Doyle successfully squeezes in an introduction to most of the characters if not all the family.

This book reads like a movie, and is not too difficult to plow through seeing as all a reader has to do is listen to what the people are saying.