Love

April 6, 2020
This witty, satisfying novel about male friendship, aging, and guilt from Doyle (A Star Called Henry) dramatizes language’s inadequacies when it comes to affairs of the heart. “The words are letting me down,” says Dubliner Joe to Davy, his old friend visiting from England, while telling him that he has left his wife for another woman, Jessica, whom they both briefly adored as young men. Over pints at several pubs, the two 50-something Irishmen get back into their old rhythms and revive, or occasionally reinvent, the past. Joe grasps for the right metaphors or analogies with which to explain his life-altering decision to Davy as much as to himself, “testing the words” for how they sound. Davy, burdened by his own sense of guilt with regard to his rapidly declining father, is at times intrigued, bored, contemptuous, resentful, provoking, or supportive of his friend as Joe circles around his infidelity with an almost Jamesian vagueness. Some readers may chafe at Doyle’s leisurely unfolding of the plot, though the two men are nothing if not good company. By closing time, Doyle has focused the novel’s rambling energy into an elegiac and sobering climax. This one is a winner.

Narrator Morgan Jones employs his best Irish lilt in portraying Davy and Joe as they lift a pint and ruminate over old times and lost loves. Maybe you think you've heard this one before, but you haven't heard Doyle's take. Jones adds a pinch of bitters to the story as the talk swerves from one side of the conversational road to the other. Jones captures Doyle's voice in so many ways, most effectively when lamenting Jessica, the woman Joe married, and Davy coveted. Ruminations on life, death, and legacy dominate the talk, and Jones deftly flits from Davy to Joe with a proficient knowledge of the men's philosophical explorations. Aye, lift a pint, and open your ears. R.O. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine