IRELAND
National Public Radio
October 18, 2017
By Michael Schaub
Irish novelist Roddy Doyle has always had a lot of literary tools in his belt, but the one he’s most known for is his sense of humor. His first three novels, The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, were all laugh-out-loud funny, and even his most serious novel, The Woman Who Walked into Doors, which dealt with alcoholism and spousal abuse, had its (darkly) humorous moments.
Fans of Doyle might be expecting more of the same with his latest novel — it’s called Smile, after all, and although its plot involves a broken relationship, Doyle has managed to mine humor out of similar situations before. But there are no laughs in Smile; the few jokes it has aren’t designed to be funny. It’s a shocking book, at times almost unbearable to read, and it’s by far the most serious of Doyle’s career. It also proves that there may not be anything that the novelist can’t do.
Smile follows Victor Forde, a 54-year-old Irish man with an undistinguished career as a journalist and a long-term relationship that has recently dissolved. He’s moved from the home he used to share with his famous wife into a lonely apartment, and spends his nights haunting a local pub. One evening, he meets a former secondary school classmate named Fitzpatrick; Victor has no memory of him, and isn’t happy to make his acquaintance: “I didn’t like him. I knew that, immediately.”
When the resolutely uncharming Fitzpatrick starts teasing Victor about their days at a Christian Brothers school (“What was the name of the Brother that used to fancy you?”), it opens a floodgate of unhappy memories. One of the first is a comment that a Brother made in class: “Victor Forde, I can never resist your smile.” It’s quickly followed by the memory of another, more serious incident that’s been gnawing at Victor for decades.
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