The Deportees by Roddy Doyle

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It's a pleasant surprise to catch up with Jimmy Rabitte, the musical impresario from The Commitments, in the title story of Roddy Doyle's first short fiction collection. Twenty years on, Jimmy is recruiting a band made entirely of deportees. The next entry requirement? A disgust for The Corrs. These fun, poignant vignettes were originally written for Metro Eireann, a paper for Irish immigrants. Doyle's foreword describes how around the mid-1990s, he "went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one". They can sound worthy on summary: a Nigerian child experiences his first bewildering day in an Irish school, for example. But basic compassion is what makes Doyle, and you forgive sentimentality when the laughs come fast. No longer are the Irish quite the niggers of Europe, as Jimmy famously declared in The Commitments.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for "Metro Eireann", a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories took a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in today's Ireland. The stories range from 'Guess Who's Coming to the Dinner', where a father who prides himself on his open-mindedness when his daughters talk about sex, is forced to confront his feelings when one of them brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, 'The Pram', in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge's older sisters and decides - in a phrase she has learnt - to 'scare them shitless'.Most of the stories are very funny - in '57 percent Irish' Ray Brady tries to devise a test of Irishness by measuring reactions to Robbie Keane's goal against Germany in the 2002 World Cup, Riverdance and 'Danny Boy' - others deeply moving. And best of all, in the title story itself, Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed The Commitments, decides it's time to find a new band, and this time no White Irish need apply. Multicultural to a fault, "The Deportees" specialise not in soul music this time, but the songs of Woody Guthrie.