Irish Times

Roddy Doyle's first collection of stories shows modern Ireland in rapid flux.

THE DEPORTEES AND OTHER STORIES

By Roddy Doyle

Viking. 242 pp. $24.95

In the mid-1980s, Roddy Doyle began publishing a trio of novels about the family of Jimmy Rabbitte Sr., a plasterer by trade who lives with his huge family in the fictional Dublin suburb of Barrytown and rather happily winds up on the dole. Like John Updike's Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Jimmy Sr. is compellingly average. He is a loving dad and a good-natured chum when it's fair weather, and a petty, selfish jerk when a major crisis -- a daughter's mysterious pregnancy in The Snapper, a business venture turned sour in The Van-- comes along to upset the mundane equilibrium of his life.

Where Jimmy Sr. is laid-back, his son is a live wire. Introduced in The Commitments, Doyle's 1987 first novel and an instant classic, Jimmy Rabbitte Jr. assembles an Irish band to play American soul. For him, it's the music of a kindred spirit, one underdog wailing to another; James Brown's "Night Train" might roll through Atlanta and Raleigh, but it also makes stops at Kilbarrack and Howth Junction. "The Irish," Jimmy proclaims, "are the niggers of Europe."

Doyle notes in the foreword to The Deportees, his first collection of stories, that he wouldn't use that line today, as modern Ireland has become home to thousands of Africans, and the country is flush with wealth. Also, there is "no such thing as an unemployed plasterer," and the ones with jobs hail from Eastern Europe. In these stories, all of which feature culture clash, Doyle offers himself as a one-man welcoming committee.

Unfortunately, the collection is heavier on goodwill than on inspiration. Part of the problem is the short story form, which cramps Doyle's style. Also, for a book concerned with stereotyping, Doyle's black immigrants tend to be suffering martyrs who exist for no other reason than to contrast with their lunk-headed white neighbors. This problem becomes clear from the first story, "Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner," which feels as dated as the movie that inspired it, in which liberal-minded Spencer Tracy finds his daughter in love with Sidney Poitier. In Doyle's version, the dinner guest is a tall, handsome Nigerian, toughened by a lifetime of oppression, who calmly corrects the family's presumptions and silently shames the sad-sack dad into facing his prejudices.

"New Boy," in which the immigrant elementary student Joseph is tormented by bullies, brings to mind the world of Doyle's fantastic 1993 bildungsroman Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same bite. Joseph, an innocent little lad who only wants to learn, is an angelic dullard.

The title story is a lackluster mini-sequel to The Commitments. Jimmy Rabbitte Jr. is once again putting together a band, a mostly all-black ensemble to cover old Woody Guthrie songs. Unfortunately, Doyle lays out more threads -- Jimmy's wife's pregnancy with the couple's fourth child, a Nigerian immigrant boarder, a never explained series of racist phone calls -- than he can adequately tie up. He then rushes the story to an early close.

Several other stories, similarly, never get much more interesting than their original premises: In "57% Irish," a bureaucrat devises a test to gauge physiological responses to Irish stimuli; in "Black Hoodie," a group of teenagers sets out to demonstrate how shoplifters can use prejudice to their advantage.

It's not all bad news. The best story, "Home to Harlem," offers a unique perspective on national identity. Declan, a mixed-race student from Dublin, is in New York both to pursue a shaky graduate thesis on how the Harlem Renaissance "had kick-started Ireland's best writing of the twentieth century" and to resolve the mystery of his American grandfather.

Declan has a natural affinity for writers who are black or Irish, but he himself never feels sufficiently either. In America, he notes, you're still American whether you are "an African-American or a Native American or a good American or a bad American." The same rules don't apply in Ireland, where being black and from Dublin can make you less Irish in the eyes of some.

In his novels, Doyle's characters range from those, like Jimmy Sr., who lack self-awareness, to those who have it in spades. But there's little such felt life behind the dreary saints and wind-up stick figures of these stories. *

Rodney Welch frequently reviews books for the Columbia, S.C. Free-Times.