Bullfighting

Bullfighting Synopsis

Bullfighting is Roddy Doyle's eagerly anticipated second collection; a series of bittersweet tales about men and middle age, revealing a panorama of Ireland today.The men in Bullfighting are each concerned with loss in different ways--of their place in their world, of power, virility, love--of the boom days in Ireland's recent history and the Celtic Tiger. "e;The stories, his memories, were wearing out,"e; the narrator of the title story thinks, "e;and there was nothing new replacing them."e; The stories move from classrooms to crematoriums, local pubs to bullrings; featuring an array of men at their working day and at rest, taking stock and reliving past glories.

In the first, "e;Recuperation,"e; a man sets off for a prescribed walk around his neighbourhood, the sights triggering memories and recollections of his wife, his children, his younger days. In "e;Animals,"e; George remembers caring for his children's many pets, his efforts to spare them grief when they die or disappear, looking, in the eyes of his wife, like a hero, like "e;your man from ER."e;But now his kids are reared and he's unemployed, and he's slowly getting used to that. "e;Suffer.

Your man Krugman said, when he asked how Ireland should deal with the next ten years. Well, this is George, suffering."e; Brilliantly observed, funny and moving, the stories in Bullfighting present a new vision of contemporary Ireland, of its woes and triumphs, and of the Irish middle-aged male confronting its new realities. It is a masterful new collection from one of the country's greatest writers.