So tonight I went to see the fabulous Roddy Doyle. Famous for so many works but for me The Woman Who Walked into Doors, I read this as a teenager. The movie (it was a book first), The Van - which I learned last night is part of a trilogy in a book series, guess who has ordered that!
The man himself is a legend, I have always had a fondness for any accent but the irish accent I could listen to all day. If you haven't heard him speak or about his new book, I put a wee quick video up on my Instagram (Always_Reading) so you can have a wee listen.
Smile is the newest book, this is the Blurb from Amazon.
Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humour, the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to re-evaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.
Just moved in to a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s pub for a pint, a slow one.
One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and pink shirt brings over his pint and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from school. Says his name is Fitzpatrick.
Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers.
He prompts other memories too – of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who says the unsayable on the radio.
But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular Brother, that he cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.
He read a passage from the new book and whilst it has been years since I read Doyle, it made me want to buy all the old books again and even the ones I have read. I bought the hardback edition of the new book and whilst I am drowning in review books (and the hundreds I keep buying), I need to bump this up the review list!
Smile is out to buy from all good bookstores now, in Hardback edition. If you have already read it or a fan please let me know which books are your favourite.
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