Full of the great joy in storytelling that characterizes Roddy Doyle’s novels, The Guts catches up with Jimmy Rabbitte—the man who in the 1980s formed the Commitments, a band composed of working-class Irish youths whose mission was to bring soul music to Dublin. Jimmy is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids . . . and colon cancer.

The news leaves him shattered and frightened—he isn’t dying, he thinks, but he might be. As he battles his illness while running a small music business, he runs into former bandmates, reunites with his brother, and decides to live more in the moment. The Guts is a warm, funny novel about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life.