Third instalment in Doyle trilogy
bogged down with sentimentality
 THE DEAD REPUBLIC
By Roddy Doyle
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Canada
ISBN 978-0-307-39897-0
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Reviewed by Sharon Greer
I have to admit at times reading Roddy Doyle’s latest novel The Dead Republic, I felt like I was wading through a massive history lesson on the Irish republican movement.
The Dead Republic is the third and final volume of The Last Roundup, a trilogy that began with the audacious and flamboyant novel, A Star called Henry. This tells the story of Henry Smart who was born in the slums of Dublin in 1901.
Henry grows up fast. By 14 years of age, he is a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army fighting the British in the GPO (General Post Office) during the 1916 Easter Rising. It’s a great book.
Volume two of the trilogy, Oh, Play That Thing, begins in 1924 New York where Smart has fled from his escapades in Dublin.
When he is forced out of New York, he finds himself in Chicago where he joins forces with Louis Armstrong in a highly unlikely scenario. The story seemed to lose its way at that point.
When Henry loses his leg in a train accident at the end of the second volume, The Dead Republic picks up from there. At this point, Doyle creates another almost surreal and unlikely scenario, where Smart is discovered in Utah, near death, by the American filmmaker John Ford.
Ford is in the desert shooting his latest Western and apparently connects with Henry, the Irish rebel. Ford decides to turn this republican legend into a film and hires Henry as IRA ‘advisor’ for The Quiet Man.
And so, this third and final volume opens in 1951 with Henry Smart returning to Ireland for the first time in nearly 30 years, along with Ford and the film’s two stars, John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
Some parts of the novel felt more like a critique on Ford and his films. Maybe it was an attempt to connect with the Irish diaspora in America, but it doesn’t quite work for me. It feels a bit flat with those episodes in the book dealing with Hollywood and its neurotic directors.
The story then abruptly veers away from Henry’s dilemma with Ford, only to move along in time where Henry gets a position as a school caretaker.
 IRISH author Roddy Doyle was in Vancouver in May to promote his new book The Dead Republic. He gave a book reading at Chapters Bookstore on Robson Street and participated in a question and answer session. He is shown above at the book signing afterwards with Sharon Greer of The Celtic Connection.
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Then, he is caught in a bomb blast in Dublin which results in his wooden leg (remember he lost it in a train accident) being left behind. Suddenly, Henry finds himself an IRA veteran hero who has lost his leg to a UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force, Protestant paramilitary) bomb.
Much ado is made about him by the Provos (Provisional Irish Republican Army) and when the peace process begins in secrecy with the British Government, Henry is used as a scapegoat/informer between the forces of Sinn Fein and the government.
Into this mixture, we can add Henry’s reunion with his wife in one of the oddest marriages recorded in a narrative.
Maybe it’s just that this trilogy gets bogged down too much with sentimentality mixed with Irish republican history. I like Doyle’s writing. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is monumental.
But The Dead Republic either lacked some kind of continuity or felt like it was bulked up by extraneous diversions involving famous people. Perhaps Doyle should have left off at A Star Called Henry.
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