Reviewers praised the music, performances and humour, while criticism was occasionally aimed at the pacing and Parker's direction. and because I was laughing so hard in the next bed she finally talked me into ripping apart my book as I was reading it so she could also have something wonderful.

His first novel, The Commitments, was published to great acclaim in 1987 and was made into a very successful film by Alan Parker. In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked the film at number 38 on its list of the "100 best British films of the century", based on votes from 1,000 leading figures of the film industry.

The sequel again features the Rabbitte family, but due to rights problems, the family surname in The Snapper was changed from 'Rabbitte' to 'Curley'. The Commitments was a major film of 1991, The Snapper is currently being filmed and The Van was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. The surname of the Rabbitte family was changed to the maiden name of Curley for the film adaptations of The Snapper and The Van, as 20th Century Fox owns the rights to the Rabbitte name from The Commitments, who were not involved in the adaptations of subsequent works in the trilogy. The trilogy introduces us to the family and, with great skill, Roddy Doyle leads us through several years of their life so that, at the end, I wanted more.

These are the author's first three novels, all in a single volume: The Commitments; The Snapper; and The Van. Georgina "Gina" Rabbitte – sharon's daughter, born in The Snapper and featured as a toddler in The Van, often repeating in baby talk the profanity used by family members.The dialogue is brilliant, and hilarious -- again, not having been, I don't know if people there actually talk like this, but if they don't, they should. Also, for the occasionally rough language, Doyle really spreads the love around, without it getting schmaltzy -- the locale, the characters -- it makes for warm reading. When he is nice and thoughtful, you as the reader feel like you've been treated to the Choc-Ice yourself (Or one of those Tina Turner drinks, wha' are they? With this pregnancy we begin to hear more about the father, Jimmy Sr, as he decides with a grandchild on the way he must become a more respectable, helpful role-modeld.