The Snapper by Roddy Doyle
The second volume in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, this again features working-class Dublin family the Rabbittes, and opens with daughter Sharon announcing to her parents that she's pregnant.
But as she refuses to reveal the identity of the father, Doyle gradually reveals, through Sharon's thoughts and the actions of the man in question, who it is and the circumstances in which it happened.
And without plunging into a deep discussion of the topic, it raises provocative questions about what constitutes consensual sex and what constitutes rape.
Doyle is good at capturing the sense of the local, working-class speech patterns – you can 'hear' the accents as you read.
Humane and funny.
The second volume in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, this again features working-class Dublin family the Rabbittes, and opens with daughter Sharon announcing to her parents that she's pregnant.
But as she refuses to reveal the identity of the father, Doyle gradually reveals, through Sharon's thoughts and the actions of the man in question, who it is and the circumstances in which it happened.
And without plunging into a deep discussion of the topic, it raises provocative questions about what constitutes consensual sex and what constitutes rape.
Doyle is good at capturing the sense of the local, working-class speech patterns – you can 'hear' the accents as you read.
Humane and funny.