The next book in the trilogy focused on Jimmy's sister, and the final book in the set, The Van, dealt more with Jimmy's father. In a way, Doyle did leave Jimmy Rabbitte Junior behind. 'So it's almost true to say I forgot I wrote it.' You couldn't go anywhere without some twit singing Mustang Sally,' Doyle quipped with a laugh. 'It became a bit of burden after a while. I got my answer when our host, Marco Werman, asked Doyle that very question in our studios recently. Soon, most everyone I knew was singing ' Mustang Sally.'īut I will admit, I always wondered what Doyle himself thought of the film version of his book. But as far as I was concerned, director Alan Parker nailed the story. When the movie version of The Commitments came out, I went along with trepidation. I thought of it as 'the southern Delta meets north Dublin.'

I mean, what a crazy idea: a young Jimmy Rabbitte turns his love of American soul music into a budding managerial career by assembling a rag-tag crew of local musicians. The three books (The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van) follow various members of the Rabbitte family, who hail from a fictional, working class part of north Dublin, which Doyle dubs Barrytown.īeing a former member of various short-lived bands myself, The Commitments really rang true. I was immediately smitten with the writing, and completely drawn in by the characters. I first came across Roddy Doyle's increasingly inaptly-named Barrytown Trilogy during a trip to Ireland in the early 1990s.

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