Major events are few in Rory & Ita but there are plenty of endearing minor ones as the two seniors reminisce about the happy times in their childhoods, the dances where young people met and mingled, the various neighbourhoods they have known, Rory's career in printing, and the joys and sorrows of family life. In one of the book's most affecting moments, Rory recalls the lyrics to his father's favourite songs. In another sequence, both of them recall their sadness over the loss of their first son (who died the day after being born) and how a broken umbrella at the little one's funeral proved to Ita that "even in death, there was something to laugh about." At times, it seems that no detail is too small to escape attention, and the book often weighs down with discussions of major appliances and the like. Says Ita of her favourite soap, "Palmolive was gorgeous; it was a green soap, and it was wrapped in a green crinkly paper--I can still see it--with a gold and black band." Whether such moments carry the same import for the average reader as they do for Roddy Doyle is a matter of debate. Some fans of Doyle's novels may prefer the company of his fictional characters, who tend to be less mild-mannered than his parents. But Doyle does succeed at creating a rich portrait of Irish life in the last century, largely thanks to a pair of narrators who are rarely less than charming. Their stories in Rory & Ita handily prove that there's no such thing as an ordinary life.