Roddy Doyle

This is a powerful book -- a character study of an alcoholic woman looking back on her life upon learning of the violent death of her husband, Charlo. She had kicked Charlo out a year earlier, after seventeen years of serious abuse. Paula tries to understand how Charlo could have hit her that first time, and why she believed, and continued to believe despite escalating violence, that everything would be all right. We see both Paula's strengths and weaknesses, her relationships with Charlo, show more her sisters and her children. Her voice is strong and this book is so well written. Life is seldom easy and everyone has a story -- Paula's will move you. show less

Perfection in a short-story collection - especially one by a single author - is a very rare thing in my experience but this must come pretty close. These stories all have Doyle's characteristic mix of humour, pathos, a feel for language and characterisation, ease of reading and thought-provoking themes, and all this is combined with an effortless easy reading style. It's impressive that all these features survive the constraints that the short story form brings.

It's all the more impressive show more when you read in the foreword how these stories came to be written. All were produced for a new monthly paper Metro Eireann targeted at Dublin's growing multinational community in 2000. They weren't written as whole stories but in 800-word instalments and Doyle apologises that as a result:

"Characters disappear, because I forgot about them. Questions are asked and, sometimes, not quite answered."

The apology is hardly necessary - the flaws were invisible to me although the joins from one instalment to the next are made clear in the typesetting.

There's variety in the settings and characters, from an Irish reworking of "Guess who's coming to dinner", the teenagers trying to teach a lesson about stereotyping to security guards in "Black Hoodie" and the tale of Declan, the black Irish-Glaswegian-American looking for his culture and roots in New York and not finding what he expected. Fans of The Commitments will welcome a late return from Jimmy Rabitte as he puts together a band again in the title story.

There's more. But I wish there were even more. A book that ends far too quickly. show less

Two Irishmen walked into a pub…

That might sound like the beginning of an unfunny joke, but it is actually the premise of Roddy Doyle’s latest novel - “Love”. Davy and Joe were drinking buddies in their youth. They are now close to sixty, and Davy has lived in England for more than three decades. However, on his visits to Ireland to check on his aging and ailing father, he still occasionally meets Joe for the sake of old times.

The novel unfolds over one such long pub crawling show more evening. Joe has surprising news for Davy – he has broken up with Trish, his wife of thirty years, and settled down with Jessica, an old flame whom Davy remembers from their old drinking haunts. In a mixture of self-justification, self-pity and barely concealed pride, Joe tries to explain the reasons for leaving a wife whom he still loves and is attracted to. Davy acts as interrogator and interlocutor, by turns fascinated and irritated at Joe stealing the show. Joe’s story nudges memories of Davy’s youth – his difficult relationship with his father, his meeting and falling in love with his firebrand wife Faye. At the end of the story, we also learn of the real reason why Davy has decided to meet Joe on this particular day.

Roddy Doyle’s latest is certainly interesting in both theme and execution. It explores the various facets of “Love” – not just love between the sexes (with its mixture of attraction, lust, desire for companionship), but also between parents and children; between friends; love for one’s roots and homeland. “Love” is also formally adventurous, most of it being in the form of a dialogue. Even Davy’s reminiscences involve long stretches of conversation. Doyle’s mastery is apparent in the way the dialogue degenerates (both in coherence and lewd content) as Davy and Joe become tipsier. There are also the snatches of that dark humour for which the author is well known.

Yet, even while I admired various elements of this work, I had to make an effort to finish the novel. Part of the reason for this lies in my difficulty with following the dialogue. It felt like reading a script, except that I regularly had to re-check who was saying what. I often found myself thinking that a conversation between two drunk men is greater fun when you’re one of them. The arguments going round in circles, the swing from irritation to sentimental camaraderie… it’s all fine if you’re tipsy and in the midst of it but as a mere “fly on the wall” I eventually found it quite tiresome. There’s also the issue that certain of the novel’s questions remain unresolved. For instance, at the end of it all, we still are not sure why Joe left Trish and which parts of his story are true, which ones he has embellished for effect and which ones he’s remembering incorrectly. Indeed, the novel is not just about love, but also about memory and the way we fashion it to our ends.

For me, “Love” is an interesting experiment but one which is not wholly successful. If this novel were a girlfriend, I would have broken up with her, albeit admitting that possibly “it’s not you, it’s me”.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2020/03/love-by-roddy-doyle.html show less

When I reviewed Paula Spencer, the book Doyle wrote about the eponymous character, I said I didn't know how he got into the mind of a 48 year old woman but it sounded right to me. Now it's 2021, the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Paula is in her 60s. Again, Doyle gives us her thoughts and conversations as if he was privy to her innermost being. One thing that didn't occur to me when I read Paula Spencer is that she is just about the same age as Roddy Doyle so I suppose he probably show more knows women of Paula's age.

This book opens on May 7 2021 and Paula Spencer has had a grand day. She got her first vaccine shot together with her friend Mary and after she, Mary and their friend and driver Mandy went for a picnic. I'm sure we all remember the relief of getting that first vaccination and how great it was to get together with friends even if we had to be outside and socially distanced. She's at home thinking about her day when there is a knock at her door and it's her daughter, Nicola. Nicola wants to stay with Paula. She's left her husband and says she's not going back.Nicola was always the one child who seemed to have it all together, a good job, a good husband, three great daughters etc. Now it seems something has happened to throw that carefully planned life out of kilter. It's not until the last 100 pages that we find out what that is. For the first 250 pages we see Paula as she deals with the pandemic and having a grown child back home and then catching Covid herself. We see how she has progressed from the recently sober woman in Paula Spencer to a woman that's happy with her life and even has a boyfriend. And, my goodness, the chapter about suffering from the virus made me feel like I had the symptoms myself. (Mind you, I recently recovered from my first bout of Covid so it's still fresh in my memory.)

It's a masterful book from one of the best Irish writers and I would recommend it. I don't think you have to read the previous two books but it probably helps. Now I'm wondering if Doyle will give us one more Paula Spencer novel when she's in her 80s. show less