Review | Smile by Roddy Doyle

Title : Smile

Author : Roddy Doyle

Rating : 4 ⭐ / 5 ⭐

Genre : suspense

Blurb

Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt comes over and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. 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—of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that Victor cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity.

Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humor, the superb evocation of adolescence, but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to reevaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.

Appreciations

Smile is a novel that's as original as it is brutal, and as painful as it is necessary. Doyle asks us not just to consider the ravages of post-traumatic stress, but to feel them, or as closely as we can, anyway. It's his bravest novel yet; it's also, by far, his best." --Michael Schaub, npr.org

“Has anyone written as beautifully as Doyle on how love and violence lean right up against each other in childhood? . . . From the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha to Smile, Doyle’s books bruise and cheer at the same time.” –The Boston Globe

The closest thing [Doyle’s] written to a psychological thriller . . . showcases his well-loved facility for character and dialogue. His ear and eye are peerless.” – The New York Times Book Review

Another of Doyle's rich and sympathetic character studies." --The New York Review of Books

“The fear of honest disclosure is central to Mr. Doyle’s newest novel,  Smile , about the lies men tell to make themselves appear normal . . . Mr. Doyle’s signature clipped dialogue is still a feature of Smile, but this short, effective novel is about the truths that emerge when, despite himself, Victor lets himself talk.” – The Wall Street Journal

Review

The story of Victor Forde, a man in his early 50’s who finds himself divorced and lonely, relocated to a small apartment. Living a solitary life.

Victor attempts to become a regular at one of the local pubs and he meets a group of similar aged men. Fitzpatrick is also someone he meets at the pub who is convinced that he & Victor went to school with each other 40 years before, at an abusive Christian Brothers institution. Victor struggles to remember this person., and doesn’t like him very much.

Victor’s life is told largely in recollection, and he was pretty much a procrastinator, a loser, who never accomplished anything. He was basically all talk and no action.

If you do not know what messer, coochie, snib or jacks mean, get the app Urban Dictionary before you read this book. Without it you will be lost quickly. But, do read this book. It is a beautifully well done study into a person suffering from trauma that led to a DID Disorder. As a Counseling Psychologist who has treated patients such as the lead character, I stand amazed at how the author captured the tragedy of having this condition. Hats off to him.

About Author

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of ten acclaimed novels, including The Commitments, The Van (a finalist for the Booker Prize), Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha (winner of the Booker Prize), The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, A Star Called Henry, and, most recently, The Guts. Doyle has also written two collections of stories, and several works for children and young adults. He lives in Dublin.

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