a digital tribute to roddy doyle's barrytown trilogy.
three books. one family. one fictional northside dublin suburb
where the soul music is loud, the chip grease is hot,
and everyone knows your business before you do yourself.
The Town
explore barrytown
every section is a place in town. step inside.
The Community Centre
The Commitments
jimmy rabbitte puts together a soul band from the lads and lassies of barrytown. music, ego, and jimmy's conviction that a northside council estate has more in common with detroit than with anywhere south of the liffey.
The Rabbitte House
The Snapper
sharon rabbitte is pregnant, won't say who the da is, and the whole of barrytown has an opinion. a family holds together through gossip and grace.
The Chipper
The Van
jimmy sr. and bimbo buy a chip van during world cup fever. friendship, redundancy, and the dignity of hot grease.
Barrytown Revisited
The Guts
jimmy rabbitte jr. is forty-seven, selling resurrected records online, and managing a cancer diagnosis the way he once managed a soul band. outspan and imelda are back. so is the town. nothing else is where he left it.
Round the Back
The Rehearsal Room
meet the commitments. the full band roster, from deco's ego to joey the lips' trumpet. plus the soul playlist they'd have been playing.
Number Seventy-Odd
The Rabbitte Family Tree
the rabbittes are the thread through all three books. jimmy sr. and veronica, their kids, and how each novel picks up a different member's story.
The Local Tongue
How to Talk Barrytown
a guide to dublin working-class slang. deadly, massive, bleedin', the state of you — translated for the uninitiated.
The Rabbittes
the family at the centre of it all
doyle's genius was giving barrytown a family and then handing each novel to a different member. jimmy jr. gets the commitments. sharon gets the snapper. jimmy sr. gets the van. but they're all in each other's stories — the rabbitte household is the stage, and the kitchen table is where everything that matters gets said, shouted, or avoided.
Jimmy Rabbitte Sr.
the da. appears in all three. owns the van book.
Veronica Rabbitte
the ma. the one actually running everything.
Jimmy Rabbitte Jr.
the eldest son. builds the commitments.
Sharon Rabbitte
the eldest daughter. centre of the snapper.
Darren Rabbitte
younger brother. helps with the van.
Linda & Tracy
the twins
the twins. always there, always watching.
The Dublin It Came From
dublin, 1987–1991
the barrytown trilogy was written in a dublin that was falling apart. the 1980s were brutal — emigration was haemorrhaging the country of its young people, unemployment was north of 17%, and whole housing estates on the northside were treated as places you drove past, not through.
doyle didn't write about this dublin from the outside. he wrote it from the kitchen table, in the language people actually used, with all the humour and fury and tenderness intact. the trilogy gave barrytown — and by extension every northside suburb — a literature of its own. not poverty porn, not social realism with a capital S. just a family, talking in dashes, getting on with it.
and then italia '90 happened and the whole country went temporarily mad with joy, and doyle caught that too.
1987
the commitments published
1990
the snapper · italia '90
1991
the van · booker shortlist
1993
paddy clarke · booker winner
Get the Books
read the trilogy, watch the films
the books are in print and the films are streaming. support the author, the actors, and the soul of dublin's northside.