The Guts Hardcover - 2013

Media reviews

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

WINNER 2013 – Eason Novel of the Year (Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards)

“The Commitments have returned to haunt our middle age. The financial challenges, health woes and marital quandaries of mid-life have rarely been this funny or this touching.”
—Don Gillmor, author of Mount Pleasant

“A warm comedy about mortality, nostalgia, friendship and family life.”
—The Guardian
 
“It’s easy now to forget just what an impact...[The Commitments] and its two successors had on an Irish reading public.... Their existence had largely been ignored in 20th Century Irish literature and it was Doyle’s great achievement that he not only gave them voice but made them his abiding subject. And he did this without a trace of condescension.... There’s a lot that’s entertaining about The Guts, not least its sardonic soundbites...and there’s much wry commentary, too.”
—John Boland, Irish Independent

“Characters so present you could pinch yourself black and blue and they’d still be standing right there in front of you. Sad, saucy, lyrical, hilarious, tragic, honest and wise. Put on your crash helmet and hold your heart in your fist, you’re in for a ride. Doyle is a singular voice. And this book sings. Alive, alive-oh!”
—Lisa Moore, author of February and Caught
 
"At last, Roddy Doyle takes us back home to the scene of his triumphant first novel. In The Guts, his singular gifts will split your sides and then break your heart, sometimes in the same paragraph. You cannot possibly ask a writer for more than this master delivers in this big-hearted, powerful, moving, and hilarious novel. This is brilliant storytelling from one of the world’s finest writers." 
—Terry Fallis, author of The Best Laid Plans and Up and Down
 
“Fierce, funny, profane and moving. Turns out for Jimmy Rabbitte, the Midnight Hour includes recession, cancer, kid worries--but always love and music.”
—Judith Timson
 
“Everything old is new again in Roddy Doyle’s latest novel, The Guts. There is a knack to breaking the reader’s heart and making them laugh out loud with the same sentence. Roddy Doyle and a few other writers have it. This book made me bust—yes, a GUT—and darn near broke, and certainly stole, my heart. Beautiful stuff from a great writer and a cast of characters who are not what they used to be: they’re even better.”
—Wayne Johnston, author of The Son of a Certain Woman