A Star Called Henry

One of the books I read over the summer was A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle. The book follows the fictional life of Henry Smart. Henry in born in Dublin, Ireland, into a poor family. His father, Henry Smart Senior, is a one-legged whorehouse bouncer who also works as a contracted hitman. Henry abandons his family along with his younger brother Victor when he's only five years old. They quickly learn to survive in the slums of Ireland, that is until Victor dies of consumption and leaves Henry alone. The book then jumps forward several years to the Easter Monday Revolution in Dublin in 1916. Henry is now a soldier of the Irish Republic and barely manages to survive the British attacks, but not before falling in love with his former schoolteacher, Miss O'Shea. Henry then goes into hiding as a dockworker in Dublin until Michael Collins revives the Irish Independence movement when he returns from jail. Henry officially becomes a member of Sinn Fein, and begins recruiting men to drive the British out. He is eventually wounded in a firefight, and wakes up to find himself being tended by Miss O'Shea's mother. He later marries Miss O'Shea, and they carry out a series of daring raids against the British forces stationed in Ireland. Henry is eventually captured and imprisoned in Killmaimham Jail in Dublin. He eventually escapes, only to find out that Miss O'Shea has been captured also, but not before she has given birth to Henry's daughter. Henry is deeply changed by these events and decides to start a new life for his family in Liverpool. This is where the story ends, although Henry is still only twenty at the time.

Since A Star Called Henry follows Henry's life, there is a significant amount of character development. Henry begins his life caring about no one but himself. This is evident even at an early age by his unwillingness to share his mother with any of his younger siblings. Even as Henry matures, he cares about few people other than himself. These exceptions include his younger brother Victor and Miss O'Shea. Henry's main focus in the novel is to drive the British out of Ireland. His focus shifts drastically in the final part of the book however, when he realizes that he has been used by the leaders of the revolution. Henry then shifts his focus to trying to build a new life for his family in Liverpool. Through this change of thought, Roddy Doyle does a masterful job of conveying Henry's emotions. Anger and frustration motivate many of Henry's actions, and because of Roddy Doyle's fantastic imaging the reader really feels these emotions while reading the book.

There were several quotations in A Star Called Henry that appealed to me. The first was "Before I went to my bed that night I'd been sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the secret society at the centre of the centre of all things. I was a Fenian. I was special, one of the few. And before the end of the week, by late Saturday afternoon, I'd murdered my first rozzer." This quotation appealed to me because it gave me a small taste of what was to come in the book. This quotation reveals indirectly what will occur in the second half of the book. It hints at danger and secrecy, but it never actually reveals any of the other events until they occur. Another one of my favourite quotations is, "Three years on a stolen bike. Through wind, rain, and bullets. Henry Smart struck strange, hard blows for Ireland and disappeared." This quotation appealed to me because it added a sense of mystique to Henry Smart's actions. The line about the stolen bike especially grabbed my attention when I read the book the first time. Henry affectionally calls his stolen bike "the Arseless" which added to the irregularity of the quotation. The strangeness of this quotation was what struck me the most.