Davy is back in Dublin from across the water and he looks up his old friend Joe for a drink. Love follows the conversation over the course of a drunken night, interspersed with Davy's internal reminiscensing. Joe has apparently left his family for a new woman and Davy is intrigued to unpick the details. Davy, meanwhile, has family issues of his own.
If the idea of spending a night with a pair of drunks on a pub crawl while discussing women appeals, then this is the book you have been waiting for. Otherwise, it is likely to feel rambling, incoherent and inconsequential. Oh, and with the story being made deliberately opaque in order to spin it out for a whole novel that seems to get longer the further in you get.
Maybe I have outgrown Roddy Doyle, or maybe this lacks some of the humanity and humour of The Commitments or Paddy Clarke. It feels like a deliberate attempt to move into more serious territory, but the magic is missing.
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