Smile
Roddy Doyle, 2017
Penguin Publishing
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735224445
Summary
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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 8, 1958
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., University College Dublin
• Awards—Booker Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Dublin
Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of more than ten novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1993 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.
Background
Doyle was born in Dublin and grew up in Kilbarrack, in a middle-class family. His mother, Ita Bolger Doyle, was a first cousin of the short story writer Maeve Brennan. Doyle graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993. His personal notes and work books reside at the National Library of Ireland.
In addition to teaching, Doyle, along with Sean Love, established a creative writing centre, "Fighting Words", which opened in Dublin in January 2009. It was inspired by a visit to his friend Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia project in San Francisco. He has also engaged in local causes, including signing a petition supporting journalist Suzanne Breen, who faced gaol for refusing to divulge her sources in court, and joining a protest against an attempt by Dublin City Council to construct 9 ft-high barriers which would interfere with one of his favourite views.
In 1987 Doyle married Belinder Moller, granddaughter of former Irish President Erskine Hamilton Childers. They have three children; Rory, Jack and Kate.
Work
Doyle's writing is marked by heavy use of dialogue between characters, with little description or exposition. His work is largely set in Ireland, with a focus on the lives of working-class Dubliners. Themes range from domestic and personal concerns to larger questions of Irish history.
Novels for adults
Doyle's first three novels, The Commitments (1987), The Snapper (1990) and The Van (1991) comprise "The Barrytown Trilogy,"centred on the Rabbitte family, from their teens into adulthood. All three novels were made into successful films
In 1993, Doyle published Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, winner of the 1993 Man Booker Prize, which showed the world as described, understood and misunderstood by a ten-year-old Dubliner living in 1968.
Doyle's next novel dealt with darker themes. The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996), is the story of a battered wife, narrated by the victim Paula Spencer, who returns 10 years later, in Paula Spencer (2006).
Doyle's most recent trilogy of adult novels is "The Last Roundup" series, which follows the adventures of protagonist Henry Smart through several decades, from Ireland to America and back again. The titles include A Star Called Henry (1999), Oh, Play That Thing! (2004), and The Dead Republic (2010).
Doyle's most recent books are three novellas: Two Pints (2012), The Guts (2013), and Two More Pints (2014). The Guts continues the story of the Rabbitte family from the earlier Barrytown Trilogy, focusing on a 48-year-old Jimmy Rabbite and his diagnosis of cancer.
Novels for children
Doyle has also written many novels for children, including "The Rover Adventures" series, which includes The Giggler Treatment (2000), Rover Saves Christmas (2001), and The Meanwhile Adventures (2004). Other children's books include Wilderness (2007), Her Mother's Face (2008), and A Greyhound of a Girl (2011).
Plays, screenplays, short stories and non-fiction
Doyle is also a prolific dramatist, composing four plays and two screenplays. His plays with the Passion Machine Theatre company include Brownbread (1987) and War (1989), directed by Paul Mercier with set and costume design by Anne Gately. designed by Later plays include The Woman Who Walked into Doors (2003); and a rewrite of The Playboy of the Western World (2007) with Bisi Adigun.
Screenplays include the television screenplay for Family (1994), which was a BBC/RTE serial and the forerunner of the 1996 novel The Woman Who Walked into Doors. Doyle also authored When Brendan Met Trudy (2000), which is a romance about a timid schoolteacher (Brendan) and a spunky thief (Trudy).
Doyle has written numerous short stories, several of which have been published in The New Yorker; they have also been compiled in two collections. The Deportees and Other Stories was published in 2007, while the collection Bullfighting was published in 2011. Doyle's story "New Boy" was adapted into a 2008 Academy Award-nominated short film directed by Steph Green.
Awards
1991 - BAFTA Award (Best Adapted Screenplay): The Commitments
1993 - Man Booker Prize: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
2009 - Irish PEN Award
2011 - French Literary Award: The Snapper
2013 - Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards (Novel of the Year): The Guts
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/10/2017.)
Book Reviews
In Fitzpatrick, Doyle has created an extraordinarily creepy antagonist: a bully who plays dumb but always gets under the hero's skin, a clumsy oaf who nevertheless can disappear like a cat into the darkness. Fitzpatrick's physical presence is palpable and unsettling, uncanny even.… Smile is something of a departure for Doyle — it's the closest thing he's written to a psychological thriller — but it nevertheless showcases his well-loved facility for character and dialogue. His ear and eye are peerless.
J. Robert Lennon - New York Times Book Review
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.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
Doyle was determined to write a novel that shocked — and succeeded.… This is a performance few writers could carry off: a novel constructed entirely from bar stool chatter and scraps of memory. But you can’t turn away.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
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.
Boston Globe
Doyle's finest work since The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, Smile combines tropes from the various strands of Doyle’s career … and merges them into a unique novel, one that is terribly moving.… Like all good literature, [Smile] will inspire debate but also admiration for the courage of a hugely successful writer who refuses to be predictable and uses the novel to challenge both the reader’s sense of ease and the nature of the form itself.
Guardian (UK)
Beautifully written, and beautifully observed.… Reading Smile, one is swept along — as in all Doyle’s novels — by the vibrancy of language, the vivid sense of character and place, but nothing prepares you for the final few pages where, in a twist of imaginative brilliance, everything you have read is turned completely on its head.
Daily Telegraph (UK)
[A] marvelous novel from this Irish master …in a novel that hinges on the fallibility of memory, a narrator’s misremembering of a crucial point is expected. What is unexpected it quite how far Doyle takes this.… It says a lot about Doyle’s power that he is able to create such an intensely moving book that yet drops so much of itself as it approaches its end.
Spectator (UK)
[Doyle] employs his sly humor and unparalleled ear for banter between convincingly imperfect characters to craft an unsettling work of psychological suspense . . . [an] artful meditation on pain, memory, and how we build the stories of our lives. It is his most powerful and sobering novel since The Woman Who Walked into Doors.
Seattle Times
Smile is no easy maneuver: tackling a sensitive subject with the grace and gravity it deserves, and freshly delivering what readers expect in Doyle’s fiction (wit, dialogue, and the accuracy of youth). That Doyle is also, 30 years in, inventing new ways of storytelling is brave and notable.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Doyle’s command of voice is absolutely sure, his dialogue authentic and the Ireland his characters inhabit — still a patchwork of fifties pietism and noughties cosmopolitanism — completely available to his and the reader’s understanding.… [A]n absorbing and expertly told story.
Financial Times
(Starred review.)Doyle skillfully depicts the triumphs and tragedies of the everyday, how the aging process humbles and ennobles, and how a single hasty decision made in one’s youth can define and destroy a mind and thus a life.
Publishers Weekly
[Doyle’s] masterly language and honesty … [and] ability to convey so much meaning through rapid-fire dialog in the Irish vernacular is unsurpassed.… Readers anticipating Doyle’s trademark wit and warmth will instead encounter a psychological mystery with an enigmatic ending that will have them flipping to the beginning looking for clues.
Library Journal
Doyle flavors a compelling character study with a soupçon of suspense, misdirecting readers for a powerful purpose that is only revealed at the shocking, emotionally charged ending.
Booklist
(Starred review.) The first-person narrative is fresh and bracing from Page 1.… It isn't until the final pages that the reader understands just what Doyle has done, and it might take a rereading to appreciate just how well he has done it. The understatement of the narrative makes the climax all the more devastating.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Smile … then take off on your own:
1. The book's title is "Smile." Why is that ironic?
2. Describe the loneliness, perhaps despair, at the heart of Victor Forde's life. What role does Donnelly's pub play in easing his sadness? What does he want from his nightly visits?
3. Victor's career began with glittery promise. What happened? Same with his marriage.
4. What is it about Fitzpatrick that inspires in Victor an immediate dislike? What do you think of Fitzpatrick? How does he dredge up the pain of Victor's childhood — traumas which have lain buried within Victor's psyche for years?
5. What was the effect on Victor and his classmates of Brother Murphy's remark: "Victor, I can never resist your smile." Victor says, "I was doomed." In what way — what does he mean? Would such a remark as Brother Murray's be countenanced today? Why were they ignored or brushed off back then?
6. The tricks of memory, its unreliability, is one of the novel's themes. How does does memory both protect Victor and play tricks on him in this story? Have your own memories ever played tricks on you?
7. Did the novel's ending take you by surprise, perhaps shock, even disorient, you? What were your initial expectations?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)