I knew what I'd just done. I'd invented something that would live for years. My own monster, and I was giving it to my friends, the only people I cared about and the only people who really, really frightened me, because of how things shifted, how the wrong word, the wrong shirt, the wrong band, an irresistible smile, could destroy you. You had to have something useful, your size or a temper, or a sister. The Brothers were zombies. Because I said they were.It has been a lot of years since I read Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and I'll never forget that it left me wrung out; moved to tears over Paddy's sad childhood. Over the years I've read other books by Roddy Doyle, but Smile is the first to recapture some of what I loved in that first read. Doyle really gets people and has a talent for capturing the little moments that make up a life. And as brief and scattered as this narrative is, we end knowing exactly who Victor Forde is; what childhood dramas moulded his whole life; and when he ended in tears, so did I.
This tale is a slow reveal, jumping from the present to the past and back again, so I don't want to say too much about the plot. As it opens, Victor Forde – fifty-four years old and recently asked to leave his home by the beautiful and successful woman he never actually got around to marrying – has returned to the Dublin neighbourhood where he grew up, and deciding that he needs to force himself to go out and rejoin the world, he chooses a nearby pub to be his local. Nearly immediately Victor is cornered by a man who claims to have gone to school with him, and while this Fitzpatrick knows all the embarrassing details of their childhood days that Victor would like to forget, Victor can't remember the other man at all. Through flashback scenes we learn about Victor's years in a Christian Brothers school, the early success as a journalist that led him to drop out of university, his meeting and falling in love with a woman who would go on to start a massively successful catering and television career, and his own efforts to turn his journalism into a book on Ireland. Victor eventually falls in with a chummy group of blokes at the pub who envy him his successful life and famous wife, but Fitzpatrick is never far from the scene; threatening to undermine everything with his intimate knowledge.
I carried the pints across to the window. How's it going? Good man; thanks very much. The words felt great and a bit forbidden. I hadn't earned the right to slip into the rhythm of the middle-aged Dub. My father had liked a pint, my mother told me. He'd liked the company of other men. Maybe that was me. A late arrival.I loved everything about Doyle's writing – in the details and in the big picture – and with so few scenes, he was able to precisely draw Victor's homelife, his school days, his falling in love, his career of provoking the establishment, and his descent into middle-aged mediocrity wherein all the old interpersonal pitfalls apply; I believed every word of it. Long passages made me smile knowingly and I'd quote off of every page if they weren't so dang long. The following is from Victor's first meeting with Rachel's posh Catholic parents; people who aren't too keen on the young man who writes articles on abortion and contraceptives:
Sunday in our house was one smell, one taste, one quite happy memory. This, though, was wild and unrepeatable. There were things in this gravy. An onion – a whole onion – slid over the lip of the potty when I poured some of it onto my plate. I'd never had to pour my own gravy before. The onion – I didn't know what it was at first – fell onto the plate. I was sitting alone; there were empty chairs on either side of me. I looked across at Rachel. She grinned at me and chewed. She gave me a little wave with the hand that held her fork. But the gravy – it was black. It was alive. The onion was the blood-covered head of one of the unborn babies I'd been writing and talking about. I stuck some of the gravy to the side of a carrot – glazed – and managed to get it to my mouth without lowering my head too far. And, Jesus – the taste. This was the Southside. This was what it was all about. There was wine in there, and history. This stuff went back to the Norsemen. It went straight to the blood. I wanted to beat my chest.Ultimately, it would take quoting the entire book to demonstrate what Doyle actually pulls off here, and I won't do that, but will reiterate: I enjoyed this immensely; even through tears.
