I am water. I need to flow. I don’t have the leisure of thought; I don’t have the capacity of it. I am a part of the picture. I flow to the edge of a cliff and I fall, I swerve and dance besides mountains and fields, I am guided by the rocks and pebbles. I entertain sundry for a dip into my wetness. Sometimes I am placid and calm to the guy with the hat and boots and jacket as he patiently holds the line for a catch. I merge into the sea or the ocean and though I may look sedate on the surface, I have an inner turmoil. I save but then I destroy too! I have a journey, a long one but it is never defined by me. I am water. I need to flow.And I am Henry Smart, named after my father Henry Smart, the original one, the one legged one, the bouncer standing at the doors of the whorehouse where every girl’s name is Maria. My father, a mere pawn, his ferociousness is not as celebrated as the ‘tap tap’ of his wooden leg. Melody, my mother looks out for her dead born children in the stars, in the sky. “That’s your brother Henry”, she points out above, my beautiful mama. I am the first born, the celebrated one, the first who managed to stay alive and suckle at her breasts. Born in the slums of Dublin, in its muck and dark alleys, I survive on its streets. I flow. My brother Victor is my ally, but not for long. Soon, on the streets I lose him like most others have, to the wild coughing that has infected Dublin. Alone, I am ruthless on the streets, lesser a kid, more a fighter, I am a thief, I am an urchin, I need to survive, I survive!At 14, I am over 6 feet tall and a man, I am a part of the republicans fighting for freedom and I kill at will. I am the most handsome of the lot and most of the girls fall for my eyes. I am ready to give up my life for Ireland. At the GPO, where we are garrisoned, my friends die one by one and Paddy’s brains are spread on my shirt sleeves as we run for our lives. I am the only one who escapes and is not jailed. My father, Henry, the original one with the wooden leg had shown Victor and me the hidden route to the river, wading through the slime of Dublin. I carry my father’s wooden leg with me.I escape the war only for a while and stay with Piano Annie, yes, that’s what she’s called and fuck her everyday and work at the docks. Her husband is probably dead, in some other country having fought another war. But Ireland needs me and I am found, not by the enemies, but by my brotherhood and I join them again. I flow. Thinking is a leisure I can’t indulge in. I am a mercenary, an assassin; they give me pieces of paper with names written on them and I carry out the executions, just like my father used to; “Alfie Gandon says hello”, the message delivered for every man he killed. They tell me we are almost there, on the road to freedom and we will have Ireland to ourselves. I believe them. I am a trainer, I train new recruits to fight the war, to stay ambushed, to shoot, to burn, to bomb; I pass on the doctrines of the struggle for freedom.I meet Miss O’Shea and she is 10 years older to me, but she had been my teacher once for a day, a teacher for me and Victor and she had taught me to write my name; ‘I am Henry Smart’. I don’t want to fight anymore; I have decided my war is over. But I am water, I have to flow, I am not allowed to think. Miss O’Shea gives birth to my lovely daughter between her bombings and gunnings and her escapades.Ivan, the bright one, one of the recruits I have trained has grown into a house of power. I see him after a long time. He is on a mission. He says I need to be killed; he has orders from the same brotherhood of republicans I fought for. He respects me, but I have been a twit, he says. He says there is no freedom struggle, it’s all about power, it is business. Like Ivan, the Generals, my bosses have been creating history but now I don’t figure in it. I never had, says Ivan. The Captains and Generals now hold important posts in the government, and business and transactions are being carried out by who we thought were our enemies. Ivan is richer now; a county is under his control.I meet Jack Dalton after a long time, my friend, the one who induced courage and made me meet new people, powerful ones. When I met him first, he sang songs written about me; I was a hero, he had said. The slips of paper had come from him. And now he hands me a slip of paper.“Can you do it by yourself”, he asks. I look at the paper. ‘Henry Smart’. “I can’t”, I say and walk away. Jack tells me “If you’re not with us, you’re against us. You have no stake in the country, man. Never had, never will. We needed trouble makers and very soon now we’ll have to be rid of them. And that, Henry, is all you are and ever were. A trouble-maker.”I am Henry Smart, son of Melody and Henry Smart and I was willing to die for Ireland.Roddy Doyle's characters are lively. He writes in short meaningful sentences and weaves his story in his own style.
Grand.A Star Called Henry by Irish writer Roddy Doyle is a rare find: a book that blends a genuine language, a unique narrative structure, and an amazing story. Told from a first person, past tense omnipresent perspective, the reader is led along a remembered past full of historical dramatic irony with glimpses into a mysterious future. We are with an infant Henry Smart as he is born and trace a tragi-comic upbringing in the dirty streets of 1902 Dublin.Using Henry’s wild, feral childhood as a vehicle to examine the events leading up to the birth of the Irish Republic and subsequent Civil War, Doyle then places Henry square in the middle of the gangster-like, complicated fight for Irish independence. This is at once a moving character study of an Irish Everyman, representing and illustrating the good, the bad, and the ugly of a centuries old culture that had produced him and also a portrait of the Irish civilization itself, an amalgam of poverty, hardship, pain, tenacity and perseverance. Henry becomes a personification of the time and place, he is the quintessential Irishman of this time: tough, resilient, violent, charismatic, but with a simple desire for love and happiness.Bluntly refusing to paint over the dark side of Irish life of the pre-Irish Republic, Doyle is an objective reporter of brutality and a culture that blithely accepts it as a matter of course. The author’s course brushstrokes reveal the result of centuries of oppression and abject scarcity. There are heroes and villains on both sides of the fight, and Doyle painstakingly displays all to his reader. Certainly sympathetic, Doyle nevertheless never wholly forgives the mean spiritedness of his ancestors, rather he describes them as they likely were: hard scrabble survivors whose atavistic pragmatism had little use for the niceties of Western civilization. This is simply a very, very good book. At times funny, this is an unapologetic account of a difficult time.
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What would an Irish Superman be like? Or, more like it, an Irish Heracles. I think, coming from Ireland in the early part of the 20th century he'd be a figure with more weight on his shoulders than either.Henry is in some ways the classic larger-than-life (literally) historical novel main character, playing a key, unacknowledged role at various turning points in history. But he is also that Irish Heracles who held my interest despite the expected tragedy of his surroundings and his uncertain moral footing as he blithely murders, slips from bed to bed, and wears his revolutionary allegiance... well I'll leave this for readers to conclude for themselves. But there was plenty to hold my interest as well: the quality of the writing, the novelty of the setting, the pace and vigor of the story, the palpable sense that some historical truths were being communicated (or else strongly-believed falsehoods) and the adventure and spectacle of a man armed with his father’s leg clubbing his way through the Irish War of Independence.p.s. Perhaps I should have said “Irish Captain America,” with our hero throwing a manhole cover as thout it were a star-spangled shield. But no, this description of Heracles (from Wikipedia) fits Henry Smart better than any of the suits that chafed his heroic musculature at various points in the story: “Extraordinary strength, courage, ingenuity, and sexual prowess…were among his characteristic attributes. Although he was not as clever as the likes of Odysseus or Nestor, Heracles used his wits on several occasions when his strength did not suffice… “ Check out this image of the Statue of Heracles, one of the most famous depictions of him originally by Lysippos (Marble, Roman copy called Hercules Farnese, 216 AD) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Her...
—Robert
Excellent book, interesting account of the harsh & brutal times in Irish History when establishing the Republic. The characters are wonderfully described with Henry at the centre of the story throughout. Expertly written. Born in the Dublin slums of 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing and begging, often cold and always hungry, but a prince of the streets. By Easter Monday, 1916, he's fourteen years old and already six-foot-two, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike.
—Debbie Walker
Together, we pushed and pulled my britches down to my thighs. Then Annie grabbed my arse before it had a chance to draw breath.-Jesus, what's that?It was a sheet of twopenny stamps, still stuck to my cheeks a week after Miss O'Shea had thrown me down onto them.-Stamps, I said.-What are they doing there?-It was the only way I could smuggle them out. You can write to your husband now, Annie, I said.-The dead can't read, said Annie. -And he couldn't read, anyway, when he wasn't dead.-Oh, I said.-Oh is right.That sort of thing.
—Tony
