This is a
very difficult book to review without ruining it for others, but I will try my
best.
Victor
Forde is a middle-aged, recently divorced man who has returned to the
neighbourhood of Dublin where he grew up.
He starts going to a nearby pub where he encounters a man named Eddie
Fitzpatrick. Though Victor has no clear
memory of him, Eddie remembers Victor from secondary school; in fact, it is
surprising how much Eddie knows about Victor:
“He’d know – he knew – more than I’d want known. He’d know facts and lies.”
Victor has
an ambiguous relationship with Eddie. He
admits, “I didn’t like him. I really
didn’t like him. He made me nervous. And he bored me. I hated it when he stood too close, or when
he sat back, right in front of me, and scratched his crotch or walloped his
stomach. And I couldn’t remember
him. He’d been in school with me; I
didn’t doubt that.” One of the reasons
he dislikes Eddie is that he stirs up memories of his difficult high school
years. Nonetheless, Victor continues to
return to the pub: “The point was, I
knew we’d be meeting again and I’d done nothing to avoid it.”
Victor also
reminisces about his life after graduation, especially his meeting Rachel Carey
who became his wife. A very beautiful
woman, she became a celebrity as a television chef while Victor gained some
notoriety as a provocateur on radio talk shows.
For many years he has been writing a book about “the rot that was at the
heart of Ireland.”
There is a
great deal of mystery throughout the novel.
One of the major questions is why Victor keeps going back to the pub
knowing that Eddie may very well be there.
There is an aura of menace around Eddie; his is a threatening presence
so is it their shared experiences, like both having lost their fathers at a
young age, that are the draw? Others at
the bar even mistake them for brothers or cousins. Victor tries to explain the attraction (“But
there was something about him – an expression, a rhythm – that I recognised and
welcomed”), but it isn’t convincing. Why
is it that Eddie remembers so much about Victor but Victor’s memories are much
less clear? Why does Eddie wear the same
clothes every time he comes to the pub?
There are
other unanswered questions as well.
Victor’s attraction to Rachel is understandable, but the reader, like
one of Victor’s acquaintances, wonders “What did she see in you?” It is easy to see that Rachel was good for
Victor; he says, “She saved me and, later, she carried me. Her assertiveness . . . her willingness to
cry, the way she took sex, took and gave – I can see now that it saved me. It stunned me and made me.” The reason for the marriage break-up is also
not clarified; the only indication of a problem is Victor’s wanting to hear his
wife explain about her day: “I’ll listen this time.” And then there’s a son who is mentioned only
occasionally?
The
characterization of Victor is wonderful.
He is not a likeable person at the beginning. He admits that he was envious of others; as a
young man, he wrote music reviews and ruined careers with his scathing
reviews: “I didn’t hate [the
bands]. I envied them, and that was far
worse. They could do it, and I couldn’t. It was the start of my career, and I tore
into them.” He admits that “I was being
a prick, but it gave me power.” He also
describes himself as being rigid: “I was
inflexible – still am. I loosened a bit,
for [Rachel], but it was always a fight.
My place was mine; hers was hers.
I like order.” And he
acknowledges, “I was just angry – and vain.”
But slowly Victor gets the reader’s sympathy as we learn about his life
in school. He describes himself as a bit
of a misfit as a teenager so I found myself wishing that as an adult he would
get what he wanted from his evenings at the local pub: “companionship, the ease of it, the
acceptance.”
And then
there’s the ending! It forces the reader to reconsider everything
he/she has just read. Some may think the
ending is too shocking and unforeshadowed, but that is not true. I couldn’t resist re-reading the book and
found numerous clues I had missed on first reading. Some clues are obvious but others are
exceedingly subtle. A second reading is
really necessary to fully appreciate Doyle’s accomplishment. The ending is discomfiting but crucial in
developing the novel’s theme.
Those who
enjoy Doyle’s style – the quick dialogue, the humour, the sense of place – will
not be disappointed. I had not read
anything by Doyle since Paddy Clarke Ha
Ha Ha, but I’m ever so glad I read this book. I definitely recommend it.
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