Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

infobox Book |
name = Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
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image_caption = Cover of hardback edition
author = Roddy Doyle
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country = Ireland
language = English
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genre = Novel
publisher = Secker and Warburg
release_date = 1993
english_release_date =
media_type = Print
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0-436-20135-6
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"Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" (1993) is a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle. It won the Booker Prize in 1993. The story is about a 10 year old boy and events that happen within his age group. He also has to cope with his parents' deteriorating relationship.

The novel is known for its interesting use of language – Doyle uses a register (syntax and vocabulary) that gives the reader the vivid impression of listening to the memories of a ten-year-old Irish boy from the 1960s. The novel is not divided into chapters but into small scenes which do not follow any chronological order. As such, a reader's first impression is perhaps that of humoured confusion. One forgets easily what one reads and then, peculiarly, it may be that one does not have to remember most of the details but rather the emotions evoked from the language and reactions of Paddy; for his language is beautifully childlike, vulgar at times, sprinkled with Irish colloquialisms, but true in mimicking the way an actual boy would speak if asked to narrate his own life to an adult.

The plot structure of the novel is also unconventional: Doyle starts with an incident, a fire, and uses it to link to past events that had anything to do with fire, and then when exhausted, Doyle moves us on to something else. Despite the absence of a clear-cut plot (introduction, complication, climax, dénouement) one can still, with certain sensitivities in place, derive a perceptible passing of time as we witness, gradually, how Barrytown changes.

The novel is sometimes referred to as a "bildungsroman", a term used to describe books which centre on the main character's development. The character goes through or enters certain experiences that change him and make him realize some truths. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain), "The Crying of Lot 49" (Thomas Pynchon) and "The Faerie Queen" (Edmund Spenser) are all mostly novels that follow a type of story that features a main character who embarks on a quest and finds some sort of enlightenment.

What stands poignant in "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" in relation to it being a bildungsroman is that Paddy's growing up is painfully bitter. While the beginning of the book is filled with playful antics, the growing antagonism between his parents and the breaking up of their marriage is evident as the novel moves on. What makes Paddy's rite of passage, as it were, all the more tragic is the fact that he does not choose his "journey of enlightenment and maturity"; instead, like some silent dark cloud, it settles and engulfs him. When the cloud passes at the end of the book, we are not left with bright skies and singing larks, but a certain calm of foreboding, of a bad dream ended but one that leaves the dreamer tainted with the anxiety it has brought along.

The craftmanship of Doyle is superbly evident in the way he infuses the character of Paddy with so much childishness and childlikeness at the same time. Reading the novel reminds one plainly of childhood, its curiosities, its surprises both good and bad, and its idiosyncrasies. In most ways, Paddy was like us, the child we used to be which we now have forgotten but recollect again, thanks to the vivid portrayal of Paddy in the novel. That common ground between narrator (Paddy) and reader, the bringing back of the reader to the level of child, establishes the foundation on which our identification and sympathy for Paddy's growing isolation forms.