![]() ![]() When The Van came out in 1990, it divided critical opinion. Great Irish novels can be about teen pregnancies, football, soul music, alcohol, redundancy and chip vans, and still be great.ĥ Great novels aren't always instantly recognised as great novels. One reported repeatedly nudging her sleeping other half in the ribs so she could wake him up and read bits aloud to him.Ĥ Great Irish novels don't have to be self-important or showy they don't have to deal with sweeping themes and or be set in the civil war or a tenement in the 1950s. ![]() They unanimously loved it, finding it moving, funny and relevant. Last year, some 24 years after its publication, I introduced The Snapper to my Australian book club, comprising two Australians, two English and one Scottish expat, and an American. At the time The Commitments was published, an Irish Times reviewer dismissed it, with something of a lack of prescience, as "of little interest to people outside Dublin". ![]()
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