Rob Doyle: ‘I simply wanted to write a book about life, and life has no genre’

What kind of book has the Irish author Rob Doyle just published? That question forms part of the point of the enterprise

Rob Doyle: “I have found myself occasionally wishing that reviewers would set aside this question of Threshold’s genre-fluidity, then move on to describing what’s actually in the book.” Picture: Fergal Phillips

I’ve just written a book – my third, entitled Threshold – and nobody seems to be quite sure of what it is. Well, it’s a book: everyone agrees on that. But the more exacting question of what kind of book it is – what genre it belongs to – has caused a degree of consternation. Even some of the most enthusiastic reviewers have devoted significant space to pondering this question of genre. The terms novel, ...