To fight or not to fight? And with quill, or with club?

Iwish I could remember who it was who famously said: “An Irishman is one who refuses to leave the middle of a thorn bush for fear that someone will take his place”. This, for me, captures a certain feature of the Irish psyche. Of late this column has offered several reviews which focus on the Ireland of the past 40 years—donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart, John Banville’s The Blue Guitar, Benjamin Black’s Christine Falls. If one had to extrapolate, there seem to be two main traumas that dominate the Irish national consciousness at this time—the sudden collapse in 2008 of the Celtic Tiger (the economic boom that occurred in the 1990’s); and the legacy of abuse associated with the Catholic Church. The economic boom brought to a traditionally staid and fixed society upward mobility, unprecedented wealth, and hand-over-fist materialism. Its collapse left a gaping hole in place of optimism, and a feeling of bitterness for those who had enjoyed riding the wave and those who had been swamped by it. As for the Catholic Church, the revelations of abuse have heightened the already strong discontent at the theocratic aspects of Irish society.

Roddy Doyle’s Smile (2017) highlights the sense of desperation in this economic post-lapsarian Ireland, with a special focus on masculinity—how it can be defined and realized in this social context. As Doyle acknowledges in an interview, this novel is a departure from his usual fiction. There are still all the traditional Doylean rewards in crisp dialogue and a story well told, but the ambivalent and fragmentary narrative perspective and psychological complexity set Smile apart.

Smile begins with the main character, Victor Forde, searching for a watering hole. He is in his mid-fifties and, apparently, has just separated from his wife and is starting over. We discover that he has moved into a tiny apartment, provided it with the barest of furnishings, and is scouting his old north Dublin neighbourhood for a “local”—a place where he can go out for a pint and read and have the odd conversation. We see that he is a stranger to this type of thing, having been married for some time to a very high-achiever and being thoroughly occupied with domestic and professional affairs. He finds a suitable place, Donnaly’s, and is just getting comfortably settled when he is accosted by a mysterious figure from his past, Edward...eddie...no, Ed Fitzpatrick. Trouble is, he cannot for the life of him remember Ed. Ed alludes to shared school experiences with the (OMINOUS STRINGS) Christian Brothers, and refers to his sister Síla Fitzpatrick, who, in their youths, had been a real bike—the bike, as Ed puts it.

In these opening scenes, then, Doyle sets the tone for the novel. The smooth, almost glib, dialogue keeps drawing the reader towards buried secrets, vague and fearful recollections of the past. The character Ed Fitzpatrick is introduced as a black blob against the light of the doorway. He gradually assumes colour—pink shirt; baggy cargo pants which, on account of their bagginess, are at times too revealing; fat stomach, which he slaps in most unsavoury fashion. And, as the story progresses, each time Victor Forde ventures from his apartment, Ed becomes more and more of an annoying and then menacing presence.

Meanwhile, in a series of flashbacks, we are presented with Victor’s brilliant career—his early borderline abusive experiences at school with the Christian Brothers; the death of his father; his early successes as a UCD student, then as an iconoclastic, moving and shaking reviewer, journalist, and radio personality; his surprisingly passionate love affair with and then marriage to Rachel Carey, a high-achieving woman from a well-todo family.

Yet all is not well. He tries unsuccessfully to initiate a relationship with a woman he meets in his new local—no soap. He keeps trying to duck the attentions of the troublesome Ed Fitzpatrick— no soap. Finally he narrates a past radio interview in which he revealed some sordid details about schooling under the Christian Brothers. It is here that one senses the pressures of a psychological whirlpool. The reader is being drawn into something. The typically straightforward dialogue is undercut by narrative lapses. The realism seems to dissolve into a dreamscape .... Stories like A Picture of Dorian Gray, Death in Venice, Fight Club come to mind.

Some readers find the disjointed narration a bit off-putting, but it greatly adds to the effect of psychodrama (both psychotherapeutic and fictional!). In fact, this is probably the most Hitchcockian of all of Doyle’s works. The author has always had a fascination with the spoken language, and has a great ability to evoke images and motives from very spare dialogue. And, in a sense we are set up by our own expectations derived from Doyle’s other works. But nothing in our previous reading of Doyle prepares us for the unsettling final chapters of Smile.

There are several books by Roddy Doyle at the Lennoxville Library. Smile is on order.

Don’t miss our Earth Day children’s activity this Saturday, or our DVD promotion of films about writers and writing in honour of International Book Day.