The Commitments (novel)

The Commitments (original title: The Commitments) is the first novel by the Irish writer Roddy Doyle and part of the Barrytown Trilogy . It was published in 1987 .

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The novel is about the twenty-year-old Jimmy Rabbitte, who founded the soul band "The Commitments" with some friends at the end of the 1980s and became its manager. (Roddy Doyle later said that the characters in the novel were based on the youngsters he taught as teachers. And the fictional town of Barrytown was partly his own hometown of Kilbarrack, Co. Dublin.) The novel describes the coming together of the band, theirs first gruesome rehearsals, the first appearance, the gradual rise of the band to the "local hero" and finally the breakup - of all things on the evening when a Dublin record company beckons with a record deal. Jimmy's trademarks are his love of soul music, his dry sense of lack of success with girls, beer in the pub and Irish puns. For him, the band is an opportunity to cope better with poverty and the threat of unemployment. When “The Commitments” finally no longer exists, Jimmy decides to start over. This time he wants to start a punk band that plays country music.

filming

The Commitments in 1991 by Alan Parker filmed . Roddy Doyle wrote the script himself.

musical

In 2013 the musical The Commitments was released at the Palace Theater in London .