Roddy Doyle's extraordinary sixth novel, A Star Called Henry, marks a major departure from the seriocomic territory he mined for his beloved "Barrytown" trilogy (The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van) and for his subsequent novels on working-class Dublin life, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Beginning at the cusp of the 20th century, Doyle's sweeping, wildly impressionistic piece of historical fiction chronicles an exuberant young boy's ascent from the Dublin ghettos to the upper ranks of the Irish Republican Army. His hero, Henry Smart, is not the "star" in the title, but the first child in his desperately poor family to survive past infancy. That perfect, transcendent spot in the heavens—and in his melancholic mother's heart—belongs to Henry's deceased older brother and namesake, while he and his younger siblings, "held together by rashes and sores," sleep in puddles of basement sewage. When his father, a one-legged bouncer and killer-for-hire in the city's nefarious underworld, is beaten to death for his thankless labors, Henry takes to the streets, where he thrives as a beggar and petty thief. From there, Doyle's propulsive narrative turns on a dime, as Henry's rage and acute sense of social justice land him on the front lines of the 1916 Easter Monday uprising. Volume one in its author's "The Last Roundup" trilogy, A Star Called Henry is written in punchy, economic prose that lends urgency to both the relentless squalor of day-to-day slum life and Henry's heady adventures through Irish history. Doyle has fashioned a gratifyingly complex character around which to build his series, a tough and fiercely loyal IRA terrorist who couldn't care less about the group's political and religious agenda. Though Henry's miserable upbringing leads him to support the cause, his allegiances are subject to change and his reasons for killing remain entirely his own.