Love is a somewhat meandering book that follows two friends on an impromptu pub crawl in Dublin. One is dealing with his father’s terminal illness, the other has recently left his wife.

We follow David, or Davey to his pal Joe, predominately, the night interspersed with snap shots of his life, both as a young man in Dublin with Joe, and later with his eventual wife Faye.

There are many things discussed between the two, relationships, ageing, love. Their friendship is also examined by Davey throughout, his outlook on their long term prospects as friends changing as the night progresses and the beers are sunk.

It’s an interesting one. I wasn’t sure it’d keep me reading, but it did, and crept up on me; I was quite emotional by the end.

I hadn’t read anything by Doyle before despite being familiar with his work. I think I was expecting a little more humour and whilst there was some, it wasn’t what I’d class as a “funny” book. But that wasn’t a bad thing and it certainly wasn’t something that I felt the book lacked.

The two men’s relationship felt very real, both showing parts of themselves that weren’t necessarily the best, but who ever is?

Excellent read. Writing first class. Thank you to both the publishers and NetGalley for gifting me the book.

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.

A unusual Roddy Doyle style of book.took me a while to get into it. A great description of some of the characters without you ever encountering them. You could imagine the two gentlemen sitting in the pub nattering away.

Roddy Doyle’s provocatively titled novel Love follows two old friends, Joe and Davey, who meet in Dublin for a catch-up after having drifted apart many years ago. Their conversation reveals the background to their love triangle – Joe is now having an affair with Davey’s first love. You can feel the anger and resentment as Davey listens to Joe describing his feelings and how the affair came about. Doyle presents the dilemmas of obligation through Davey’s character; he was caring for his sick father and didn’t wish to prolong the evening but felt a sense of duty to his friend also. In contrast, it was difficult not to feel severe anger at Joe’s constant selfish decision-making, especially in the scene where his affair was almost revealed to his wife.
All this subtext is beautifully delivered through the simple setting of the dialogue between two people at dinner complemented with flashbacks. The intensity of the dialogue limited the setting of their surroundings which meant it wasn’t always clear whether they were in the past or present. The elements of the story remain vivid and enraging long after reading it. Having experienced Roddy Doyle’s classic humour in his children’s novel The Giggler Treatment, that is a well-worn book on my shelf, I was pleased and surprised at his ability to write literary fiction. I chose to read this book as I was curious to see his work in another genre. I was amazed at how engaged I was and still am in the details of the story, feeling anger on behalf of Davey and disappointed that he was so calm and kept his feelings to himself. It’s a journey that is relatable and, like me, you might dream of throwing a pint in Joe’s face by the end.

Two old friends meet for a drink, as they have done over the years since they were young men. Their stories emerge as they move around their old drinking spots across Dublin having just just one more pint and coming face to face ghosts of themselves. Mainly we listen in to their conversation that goes back and forth between the past and present, from the deepest stuff of life to throwaway musings on TV, encompassing friendly banter, drunken stroppiness, philosophising and truths. It feels effortless - as good writing does - but it’s bloody clever. Perfect dialogue and pieces of the jigsaw added, apparently at random, as the evening and the novel roll forward. Real everyday voices and real everyday lives providing casually profound insights into mortality and all forms of love. I’d call this working class literary fiction and I don’t know why there isn’t more of it.

Beautiful funny naughty and delightful as I knew it would be. Two men chatting over the jar about the most difficult stuff in their lives. Not quite saying anything and saying it all to one another a total joy thanks Roddy

Excellent and absorbing novel about two old friends having a drink in a pub. There are constantly shifting narratives and subtle power struggles. But what an amazing twist. You don't see it coming but it makes you reconsider the whole novel. Profoundly moving.

This was my first Roddy Doyle and it won’t be the last! Such fantastic writing .
The synopsis may appear a bit dull to some , two men sat in a pub reminiscing about their friendship but don’t be fooled .. The reader I sent taken on a journey with the men and I soon felt as if I was actually sat in the pub wit them . It is set over one afternoon but drifts back to the 80s which I loved , the banter between them is brilliant , full of humour and wit and it’s very addictive. .
Thank you netgalley for this arc.

What a book! I found it a great exploration of friendship which really moved me. It drew me in and didn't let go. I loved the sharp, witty writing and dialogue between the characters and found it easy to read. Brilliant!

‘Love’ by Roddy Doyle is the first novel I have read by this author and unfortunately I think it may be the last. Despite sticking with it until the end I found myself constantly wishing it would come to a conclusion. I recognise that the dialogue is just as you would expect a conversation to go in a pub, especially as the two men get more and more inebriated but I found it quite irritating. I’m sure many people will love this book, and it’s sentiment, but it just wasn’t for me.

Roddy Doyle is an Irish literary giant. I was delighted when I was approved to read Love by NetGalley and Vintage Books.

This story is set in Dublin where two old friends, Davey and Joe, reminisce and catch each other up on their lives - seemingly centred around a woman, Jessica, whom they were infatuated with as young fellas. Joe tells the story of how he rekindles his fascination and an affair with her, as the ageing men drink pints.

I will admit, it took me a good while to get into this: to the point where I was almost going to put it down. I was struggling with it initially. However, as the book went on, I could see exactly what Doyle was doing. As the men get deeper and deeper into conversation, they get drunker and drunker, making the story pick up its pace. There is a level patience that needs to be accounted for when reading this book but it is worth it.

This book is centered on conversation and dialogue. The way conversations can take twists and turns, sidetracks and go in all sorts of directions. Doyle has mastered this craft. When the drink is added, the book becomes more chaotic and slightly confusing at times, as drunken conversations often do. We hear them say “one more” drink several times throughout the book as secrets and details begin to emerge. Davey reflects on how he believes this will be “the last time” he and Joe see each other.

But besides this conversation, you see more into Davey’s life as it also flicks back between meeting his wife and his teenage years with Joe, along with with other key moments to where he is in his life currently. Davey seems to be the one that almost interrogates while Joe responds. Yet because you see other parts of Davey’s life, you start to think that there is more than meets the eye with this story.

The book is mad at times but is also very poignant. Doyle examines masculinity, fragility, family and nostalgia as an old friendship rekindles. This book is filled anger, heart-break, laughter and, ultimately, love.

Thank you to Vintage Books and NetGalley for this ARC.

I love all of Roddy Doyles books. This book is beautifully written Davy & Joe are fantastic characters & together they reminisce about their past. I loved it

Love plays out as a conversation between two blokes down the pub. I loved the simple conceit - that you may have once been in a pub and glanced over at a couple of men chatting over pints, but that the conversation taking place was likely not the one you imagined. It's full of heart break and musings on life and love and so realistically told.

Two aging men on a pub crawl around Dublin, remembering their youth and their love (for wives, lovers, fathers...pubs and drink!).
The dialogue is believable, it's like sitting in a pub and listening in to their conversation. Joe likes to talk and his version of the story takes the entire book to get to the point.
The story is a bit hard to get into (mostly dialogues) and I miss the early days Roddy Doyle humour.
I'd like to see the author's take on a night out with Faye (the most interesting character) and the other ladies!

Full of humour and the signature wit of Roddy Doyle, this is a delight of a book. Warm and envelops you into the story as the characters draw you into their world. I found it addictive and didn't want to put the book down. A text so rich that the smells and sounds join you in the room.

Love is a tour de force: it succeeds in the virtually impossible task of making a long, drunken conversation between two middle-aged men interesting. Spellbinding, even, at times as secrets are revealed and stories spanning a decades-long friendship are laid bare.

Davy and Joe meet for dinner in Dublin; dinner becomes a pub crawl. Joe has something he desperately needs to talk about. He’s in love. Davy has something he doesn’t want to talk or think about. The past is unfurled in a rambling, witty, disjointed but carefully composed conversation.

If I were you, reading this description and not having read the book, I’d be screaming Oh for pity’s sake, spare me! Who hasn’t sat and listened to a friend or family member talking about being in love? Annoying, isn’t it? As a friend or close relation, it’s your job to listen. At times you might want to slap them but you listen sympathetically. Who in their right mind would volunteer for the job?

Doyle captures the dynamic exquisitely yet keeps you hooked. Mostly because of course it’s not you sitting there listening, but Davy, and you want to find out more about what’s up with him. Joe isn’t asking, much — he’s too wrapped up in himself. But Davy; you want to know more there.

Davy questions Joe’s version of the past, and digs in to understand what he’s misrepresenting about the present. He hides his irritation, mostly, but gets impatient. He wants to leave, get out of there, but gets pulled back in again and again. After all, they are friends, and it keeps coming back to what that means.

Love seems to be a pitch perfect display of male friendship, male conversation. But what do I know? I’m a woman. There are some parts I really identified with, however. One is how Doyle (Davy) describes the comforting feeling of sinking back into speaking Irish dialect after many years of living abroad. That feeling of being at home.

Home is a theme running through the novel. Where is home? What does it mean to feel at home? How the past is your home or how you can think it is. Want to think it is. The seduction of the past, as we get older, because it feels like home. If Dublin is, or was, your home, you’ll particularly enjoy this book.

Getting older, ageing, is another theme. Friendship as we age, marriage as we age, parents, failing bodies, changing lives and the simultaneous need to return to our past and escape our past.

And of course, it’s about love. Love between friends, between parents and children, between spouses. And that other weird, unreliable, unpredictable, deceptive kind of love — being ‘in love’.

Reading this does take you back, if you were young in Dublin a few decades ago. There’s an almost Proustian whiff, and more than a hint of Joyce, what with all the old pubs, but don’t let that put you off. Or entice you, for that matter — it’s only a smell of stale beer, after all.

For all these reasons, I gave this book 4 stars. It’s undoubtedly well written by a skilled writer. And it’s funny, quite often. I took away 1 star because, well, it’s a conversation in a pub by two middle-aged men and, well, how boring is that? It’s not boring to read but it’s a boring concept. Especially now that I dislike pubs, and booze, and people getting drunk.

Daley hasn’t lived in Ireland for over 30 years but he goes back to Dublin a few times a year to see his father and usually meets up with his old friend Joe for a night out while he’s there. This time, after they’ve had their meal, they set out on a drunken crawl of their old haunts. Not because they particularly want to, their friendship has faded over the years, and certainly not because they’re enjoying their beer but because they each want to tell the other something important. But these are men, and men as Doyle says, can’t talk about their feelings so it takes a very long time and a large number of pints for Joe to tell his story. After bumping into Jessica, a woman they both fancied when they were younger, Joe has left his wife and moved in with her even though they don’t really seem to have a life together. Told completely in either drunken repetitive dialogue between the two or Davey’s hazy recollections of past events as he pays yet another visit to the jacks I found myself getting as fed up as Davey that Joe wouldn’t just stop rambling and get on with the story. I would have preferred to skip the repetition of ‘another pint, no, ok then, whose round, fuck off, did you fuck her, another pint’ and read the parts where the story comes alive but it’s actually quite difficult to follow so couldn’t do that. Loved a lot of Doyle’s books and I know some readers, especially men, will think it’s brilliant but this one is not for me.

Still unsure how I feel about this book! I’m torn between loving it and finding it hard going.
Set in Dublin, where I come from, the two characters who are similar vintage to myself, one of whom now lives in the UK (like me) and with many references back to pubs and parts of the city I’d have frequented in my time, meant that on paper I should have adored this book. I definitely didn’t adore it but I equally could not put it down. The book takes place over one evening when the two childhood friends meet up for dinner and drinks. They immediately fall back into that fabulous friendship that only those friends you grew up with still keep and the feeling you can confide anything in each other. This particularly resonated as I have lifelong friends from home like this and I’ve recently had similar conversations as those in the book with them. One is unashamedly wallowing in a bit of self pity the other at times covering his resentment, but what shines through is that no matter what, they are there for each other when it counts and boy towards the end of the book does it count.
Wonderful, frustrating, personal, and poignant I think probably sums it up.
My favourite line from the whole book has to be “ I was still a Dubliner and I liked being a Dubliner”
At one point this might have been a three star book but by the end it became a five star one

I’ve always enjoyed Roddy Doyle’s writing and found his books with their mix of humour and tragedy engaging and convincing. But this one just didn’t have the same magic for me. Two old friends meet at a Dublin pub for a night of drinking and reconnecting and reminiscing. One has a dark secret, one has a hidden sorrow. They care for each other, even if they can’t find the words to express their love. One went away to college, one didn’t, one went to London, only coming home for short visits, while the other stayed. As usual with Doyle the narrative unfolds through dialogue, and their stories are gradually revealed thought their conversations. The reader is drip-fed information but for me it just all took too long to get to the point. They talk over each other, hesitate, repeat themselves, and although this might reflect the way old friends do actually talk to each other, I found it became tiresome, and as much is left for the reader to fill in, the narrative was too episodic, with it not always being clear what had actually happened. The flashbacks are sometimes obscure and the conversation itself occasionally incoherent. I failed to engage with either man. The book is really just one long pub crawl and as a non-participant I felt excluded. Overall a disappointing novel, especially considering how effectively Doyle has written in the past.