Worldwide preparations for New Year’s Eve, 1999 are so
feverish that it seems appropriate to stop and ask ourselves just
what, exactly, is being celebrated. Not the birth of Christ, at
any rate: scholarly consensus has long had it that Christ was
actually born in 3 or 4 B.C. The real millennium, in other words,
occurred quietly and without incident several years ago.

So are we celebrating the beginning of a new millennium,
or, more reasonably, the end of the most horrific century in
human history? After a hundred years in which every possible
ism—including idealism—
and even human nature itself appear to
have been discredited, it’s hard to approach
the festivities with
much enthusiasm. The mood, for anyone who gives the matter much
thought, can only be prematurely crapulous.

The collapse of political idealism and the many
intractable political messes that pollute the globe have provided
rich material for a number of current novels. Take the case of
Ireland, one of the century’s prime crucibles of
political failure, a region, like Palestine, so warped by past
errors that present diplomacy seems useless, and where the accrued
layers of pride, chauvinism, and mythmaking on both sides of the
conflict have further botched the chance for a reasonable
dialogue.

Roddy Doyle, the forty-one-year-old Irish author whose
previous novels (which include Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
and The Commitments) have not been pointedly
political, has done what has until now seemed impossible: he has
written an honest