They run the Grand National over their neighbors’ hedges until Liam breaks his teeth. He and his friends act out Father Damien and the lepers, and Geronimo, renegade Apache. Patrick’s vivid imagination is influenced by television and film, from The Three Stooges (Kevin pokes Patrick in the eyes) to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, to popular westerns. Kevin is the leader of their gang, and together they take joy in playing with their pretty neighbor’s knickers on the clothesline, setting fires, shoplifting for the thrill of it, giving each other dead legs and Chinese burns, and scuffling to maintain their group hierarchy. But he mostly sat in his chair.” Francis, nicknamed “Sinbad,” is Patrick’s quiet younger brother, whom Patrick torments mercilessly, kicking him, pinching him, getting him in trouble at home, and even helping his friends set Sinbad’s lips on fire with lighter fuel, saying “It went like a dragon.” Patrick delights in running with his friends, Kevin, Liam, and Aidan, causing no end of mischief in their small community. Patrick says that da would “be mean now and again, really mean for no reason…He was always busy. Patrick is named after his da, who works in the city. His ma maintains the home routine, playing the role of comforter while looking after Patrick’s younger sisters, toddler Catherine and infant Deirdre. Patrick is the oldest child in a working-class family.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is set in the late 1960s in the fictional north Dublin community of Barrytown. With his use of clipped dialogue, Irish vernacular, and stream-of-consciousness narration, Doyle vividly depicts the small but meaningful everyday experiences and emotions of his naïve child narrator. Ten-year-old Patrick Clarke narrates a year of his life as he transitions from carefree prankster to man of the house when his parents’ marriage falls apart. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a coming-of-age novel written in 1993 by Irish author Roddy Doyle.

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