Love (2020)
By Roddy Doyle
Penguin Random House, 328 pages
★★
Have you ever been in a pub in which people are getting so blasted that stories start, stop, start, stop, meander, start and stop? If the dynamics of such a conversation fascinate you, you will enjoy Roddy Doyle’s Love. If not, you will find it tedious.
Love covers a long day in Dublin in which two men in their late fifties who’ve not seen each other in decades reconnect. Joe and Davy were best friends in their school days, but Davy has lived in Oxfordshire, England for nearly 40 years, and Joe remained in Ireland. This sets the table for an awkward conversation in which what they think they know about each other has been dipped in now-hardened amber that only partially dissolves in the heat of a string of Irish pubs.
Over the course of the day, the two get drunk and sober numerous times. Joe does most of the talking, with Davy acting as a combination inquisitor/voyeur whose reason for wanting to hear Joe’s tale is ambiguous. The only deep connection between the two lies in the 1980s, when they perceived themselves becoming “men” the first time they entered George’s Pub, were addressed as “gentlemen,” argued about music, and quaffed legal pints. After that, their bond is hazy and it’s not just the drink that’s talking. Joe false starts many times over in a story about a girl they both allegedly mooned over back in the days, though Davy claims to recall only that he thought her attractive in the few times he saw her and never knew her name. In their adult lives, Joe married Trish, whom Davy knew back then, and Davy wed the tart-tongued, whip smart Faye.
Both men profess deep love for their wives but, in Joe’s case, there is a twist: Jessica, the girl from the pub. He tries to tell Davy about how he met Jessica 37 years later at a parent conference at his daughter’s school. He has moved in with her and, Joe claims, they’ve not even had sex but he loves her for reasons he can’t articulate. Neither man, it seems, can articulate much of anything, though they do tell each other to “fuck off” numerous times. (In a good way?) Joe still loves Trish and thinks she’s “grand,” but says he needs to be with Jessica. At times Joe’s rambling justifications reminded me of an old David Crosby song, “Triad,” in which he sang “I don’t really see/Why can’t we go on as three?” Mostly, though, the day’s drinking yields verbalizations more akin to a doll whose string one pulls to hear it speak the limited set of phrases in its repeating loop.
Doyle intersperses flashback chapters, which was a good strategy or we’d know almost nothing about Davy. He too carries a burden, though from something of a different nature from Joe’s. I shall say no more about it, as it provides the book’s only real revelation. I have enjoyed many of Doyle’s past efforts–especially The Barrytown Pentalogy and Smile–but he misfires in Love. The most intriguing thing about the novel is its title. Does it refer to someone being there when most you need them? Ideal (or idealized) love? Immersion in a culture one understands without filters? Deep friendship lurking beneath shallow surfaces? All of the above? If Doyle wants us to ponder such things, he failed. It seems all the world as if the greatest love is that pint of beer on the book jacket.
I wish I had kept a stroke count of the number of pints Joe and Davy consumed over a roughly 10-hour period. They were certainly plentiful enough to make me disbelieve that either man could still be on his feet. Are we supposed to see Joe and Davy as the Ghost of Irish Alcoholism Past? There’s not enough to suggest that, aside from a few oblique remarks about people in business suits quaffing white wine and Joe and Davy’s obviously false remarks that they’ve pretty much given up drinking. Indeed, one could come away from Love with the accusation that Doyle is trading in stereotypes. (For the record, 7.4% of Americans are alcoholics; in the Republic of Ireland it’s 6%.) However we want to spin this, Love is a beer-fueled version of the movie Diner (1982) without the wit and humor.
Rob Weir
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