The Deportees: and Other Stories Paperback – December 30, 2008

This book was very enjoyable and told the story of deportees in Ireland from a number of different perspectives. This is a collection of short stories that take the reader into the lives of different people and places that all have to deal with the notion of national identity and deportation of "outsider" classes that some consider threatening to their normal way of life.

Highly enjoyable, thoughtful, and thought provoking. Grounded, yet playful in language.

Really enjoyed the dialogue and the situations that captured the changes in Ireland during the time of the Celtic tiger, which corresponds to the time we lived there

This is a great book for those studying the impacts of immigration of Ireland after the economic boom. It's super funny too. If you liked The Commitments you'll love this book.

I've always loved Roddy Doyle's writing and this is no exception. The book is fabulous. Very funny and wry. A total joy. I didn't want it to end!

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958 and saw his first novel, "The Commitments" published in 1987. It was later adapted for the big screen, a version that saw Star Trek's Colm Meaney and a very young Andrea Corr among the cast. Doyle went on to win the Booker Prize in 1993 with "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha".Doyle begins the book with a short foreword, noting the changes he's seen in Dublin (and in the Irish) since the early 1990s. "It happened", he says, "somewhere in the mid-90s. I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one." Having once been a country that exported its people, it now had a healthy immigrant population of its own. "The Deportees" is a collection of short stories - all of which first appeared in Metro Eireann - that takes this change as its central theme.The book's highlight, for me, was its "title track". As well as being the book's longest story, it also features a familiar face : Jimmy Rabbite, the ex-manager of The Commitments. Jimmy's now 36, is married to Aoife and has three kids - with a fourth on the way. He's still mad about music, hates the Corrs - presumably on a musical level only - and answers to the name `Slim Shady'. The story sees him deciding to put a band together, with the members picked from Dublin 's immigrant community. (It'd have been great to find out how Jimmy's brothers and sisters were doing, and if Larrygogan was still alive. The only ex-Commitment who makes an appearance is Mikah Wallace, now quite possibly the world's grubbiest born-again Christian).Of the remainder, there are two I'd give the nod to - although the others are by no means disappointing. `New Boy' follows Joseph's first day at school in Ireland. Unfortunately, he's sitting in front of Christian Kelly, the class nuisance. The little brat has one equally torturous acolyte called Seth Quinn - and the pair have apparently decided that Joseph's good for a bit of entertainment. `Black Hoodie', meanwhile, is told by an Irish schoolkid in his transition year. As part of their education, his class have to set up their own mini-companies. Our hero sets up `Black Hoodie Solutions' with a Nigerian girl and a classmate with access to a wheelchair. The trio aim to provide consultancy services to local shops and businesses, to help them avoid stereotyping the youth of today. Unfortunately, their efforts land them in trouble with the Gardai.An easy and enjoyable read, definitely recommended

It amazed me after reading this how different Irish humor is from American humor. Doyle is a native of Ireland and his humor reflects it. Wanting to take a break from classic literature, I found this book and decided to give it a try.I really enjoyed his wide variety of characters. They ranged from older men trying to come of age and accept the changes being made in Ireland, to a little boy who is teased on his first day of class. I learned a great deal more than I had ever thought I would about Irish "culture" through this book. Doyle painted a picture that was easy for me to relate to. I liked that he is very descriptive in describing the emotions of the Dad in the first story that met Ben for the first time. Or the poor boy who got arrested to try to prove the steretyping in Ireland; and who can forget the man whose job was to come up with a formal way to measure how "Irish" one is.The only way to make this book of short stories more entertaining would be if I could grasp Irish humor. I'm sure some of the things that I read and thought nothing of them were things that other people who know this humor would be in stiches over. Overall, Doyle is a great writer and created a book that was fun and easy to read and I would love to recommend this book.

This is Roddy Doyle's first story collection, and it's an interesting one. As he explains in the Foreword, they were all originally written for a Dublin based magazine, and had an 800 word limit. So it was fascinating to read the stories knowing the constraint that was placed on Doyle. All of these stories in some way involve the immigrant experience of 'outsiders' trying to find their way in Ireland, and it's clear that Doyle has a lot to say on the topic. There are no bad stories here, and lots of interesting characters and ideas. My only complaint is that I wish some of these were fleshed out a bit more, because they were very interesting, but again, he was working within a constraint so it's a minor quibble. Read if you are a Doyle fan or a fan of Irish writers in general!

Nachdem Irland als "Armenhaus" Europas jahrhundertelang Arbeitskräfte in alle Welt exportierte, ist es seit geraumer Zeit umgekehrt: Flüchtlinge und Einwanderer aus den unterschiedlichsten Ländern versuchen heute ihr Glück in Irland. Wie geht Irland mit seinen Immigranten um? Roddy Doyle beleuchtet dieses Thema von wirklich vielen Seiten mit seinen Kurzgeschichten in "Deportees". Nicht jede ist brillant geglückt, aber alle sind äußerst kurzweilig und unbedingt lesenswert!