The Commitments

Jimmy Rabbitte has a vision: Dublin's northside needs soul music. Not pop, not rock — soul, the music of the working class, the music of people who have been kicked around and still dance. He assembles a band from the unemployment lines and back rooms of Barrytown, and for a few glorious weeks, The Commitments are the best thing Dublin has ever heard. Then egos, romances, and the fundamental impossibility of keeping twelve Dubliners pointed in the same direction tear it apart. Doyle wrote this novel almost entirely in dialogue — fast, profane, hilarious — and invented a Dublin voice that a generation recognized as their own. It is a book about music, class, and the beautiful futility of ambition.