Novelist Roddy Doyle ("The Commitments," "The Snapper," "A Star Called Henry," etc.) has many more brilliant books to write. But now you can read a book about Doyle. Caramine White, who teaches English at North Carolina's Guilford Technical Community College, has just published "Reading Roddy Doyle," a critical look at the 43-year-old author and his work. Nothing in White's background (a stint in the Navy, a bachelor's degree in Latin and psychology) suggests a particular expertise in either Doyle or Irish lit. But she has a firm - if not masterful - grasp of her subject. Some readers may quibble with White's cultural analysis ("...a stasis not found in America seems to pervade Ireland. People lack the sense of limitless future..."). Still, "Reading Roddy Doyle" is a useful book - and surely one of many more to follow on this writer who, as White puts it, "has the Dickensian gift of appealing to the uneducated and the educated alike."

(200 pages / $14.95 / Syracuse University Press)