The Commitments

In the first volume of the Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle, winner of the Booker Prize for  Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha , introduces The Commitments, a group of fame-starved, working-class Irish youths with a paradoxical passion for the music of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and a mission—to bring Soul to Dublin. Doyle writes about the band with a fan's enthusiasm and about Dublin with a native's cheerful knowingness. His book captures all the shadings of the rock experience: ambition, greed, an