“The Guts” is twice as long as “The Commitments,” and its size is a representation of the way aging attracts barnacles of duty and disappointment. Though he’s made a bundle with a Web site dedicated to music by obscure but beloved Irish punk and pop acts, the recession has cut into sales. As the story opens, he’s 47, married with four kids and recently diagnosed with bowel cancer. The hero again is Jimmy Rabbitte, the manager of that ill-fated band, and in the second decade of the new century, he’s mainly just feeling ill. “ The Guts,” Doyle’s moodier, black-humored sequel to “The Commitments,” is about how hard life will work to whomp all that upbeat stuff out of you. “The Commitments” is pugnacious, funny and brisk, but its biggest thrill comes from watching how the characters’ horizons broaden the moment the lights go down and the amps fire up. In imagining a short-lived Dublin band playing soul covers, Doyle knew that music’s chief virtue as a novelistic subject is that it’s a pathway to identity. Novels about pop music too often are weak riffs on fame and celebrity, or (worse) opportunities for the author to show off his discographical knowledge. Irish author Roddy Doyle caused a sensation with his first novel, “ The Commitments” (1987), and rightly so.
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