Well, this was unlike any book I have read before. Joe and Davy meet in a pub and talk, and talk, and drink, and talk some more, and have another drink. During their night of drinking Joe tells Davy that he has left his wife for the girl they both knew (and fancied) some decades ago. Davy is visiting Ireland after settling in England years ago. Mainly to visit his Dad. His wife Faye isn't with him though. We learn more of their joint and separate pasts from their musings and anecdotes along the way, also with Davy's narration and inner thoughts.
It's mostly dialogue - with inner musings and flashbacks interspersed throughout, the ramblings become less coherent with the increasing alcohol intake but it always stays on the right side of making sense. It's sad in places, happy in others and very poignant all the way through. I hadn't read the synopsis carefully before diving in so I really wasn't prepared for what happened at the end and I think I am better off for that.
It's not a book with a beginning, middle and end, in the traditional sense. It sort of jumps right in, meanders around a bit and then finds its way better towards the end. I understand that this might not appeal to many but, for me, the way it has been written fits the story being told. I also think that it would definitely work better on a screen and I can't help thinking that the author had the screenplay in mind whilst writing this book.
Peppered through with some delicious, occasionally dark, humour, the characters do a good job of keeping things moving. It does drag a bit at times but it is worth persevering with and getting to the end. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I've read a number of Roddy Doyle books over the years so I am familiar with his narrative. It's very much as if you are there listening to the characters as they speak. He has a very conversationalist style. I didn't really get into this book. I found it to be a bit slow and I didn't really care about the characters.

I've been a fan of Roddy Doyle for a long time, so I was looking forward to 'Love', but was ultimately disappointed.
I've opted for three stars despite not finishing the book, because I think this is a case of it me not being the right reader for it.
'Love' centres around two old friends reconnecting over drinks. Our narrator is using the drinks as an escape for a couple of hours from his own family problems, but he's quickly drawn into his friend Joe's explanation of the breakdown of his marriage, after he bumped into someone he was attracted to in their youth and fell for them. Joe's tale is a catalyst for our narrator to reassess his own marriage, and his own attraction to Jessica, the woman Joe left his wife for.
Objectively, the characterisation is great, the concept is solid, and there's nothing wrong with the writing - or perhaps, if there is, it's that it's almost too realistic. Every pause, every word, every aside is there. It could almost be a transcript. And this, I think, is where I might be the wrong reader. The wonderings and meanderings of conversation between increasingly drunk middle-aged men in a pub, relating every detail of how they destroyed their relationships, or as they relive their youth, just didn't hold me as a reader. I found myself zoning out in the same way I would if I was stuck listening to such a conversation in the pub, which I suppose is a backhanded compliment to the atmosphere of the writing. But I kept waiting for something to *happen*, and it didn't - or not soon enough for me to have reached it before I put the book down at around the halfway point. It feels almost unfair to have given up, though. Perhaps at a more relaxed time in the world, or at a different time in my own life, I'd be more invested in the story, and I'd be willing to give it another try.

Two middle aged men meet in a pub to catch up. One has recently left his wife and family. The other - the narrator - listens as his old friend tells the disjointed story behind this upheaval. In between, they reflect on their past lives, particularly their relationships. And that's it. The whole novel takes place over a few hours, and consists mainly of dialogue.

Doyle has a real gift for writing realistic dialogue. His characters 'speak' the way that people actually speak, complete with repetition, pointless segues, odd little filler words. His characters visit the toilet and check their phones and signal to the barman. It is an absolutely believable piece of literature. The trouble is, the way that real people speak isn't necessarily that easy or interesting to read. I'm torn between admiring Doyle for his authenticity, and wishing he'd sacrificed some of it for a more readable novel.

The pace is slow, as you;'d expect. If you prefer to read thrillers and stories with strong plots and lots happening, this book is really one to avoid. If you prefer slower paced novels full of introspection, it'll be more your cup of tea. However even fans of the character-driven, meditative novel will find this one overly slow I think. In the third quarter particularly it really drags. It's a great, accurate portrayal of two increasingly drunk older blokes reminiscing and arguing. The problem is, not many people really want to hear that. Unless you enjoy listening in on the conversation of a pair of random fifty-something males in an old fashioned pub, you probably won't want to read it in book form either.

Doyle is definitely a talented writer, and I'll carry on reading his books. But for me this one could have done with being two thirds of the length or alternatively having an additional plot thread.

I have read a considerable number of Roddy Doyle's books previously, my favourite being A star called Henry, which was fast paced, emotional, funny and devastating. Also his early works the van , the snapper ect so laugh out loud funny.
I got half way through love and found it heavy going, two men chatting in a pub, going over their past, their conflicting memories and different altitudes,. Did not find this captivating or particularly amusing, in fact did not finish it.

Love in so many forms and 2 lives separately and entwined, all seen through a single drunken evening. Fabulous!

I loved this book. It is about two old friends out for a few drinks telling each other about their relationships. I liked the writing style and the pace of the story and the fact there are no chapters. It made the story seem like a continuous tale.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

A wise man once told me that you'll never meet anybody worth knowing in a pub and that thought echoed in my mind as I attempted to drag myself through Roddy Doyle's latest book 'Love'. I received a free ARC ebook from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I hope they won't think it's TOO honest.

I'm an Irish passport holder. I'm sure I had to tick a box on my application promising to love Roddy Doyle books. If I did, they're going to have to revoke it next time I renew. I just couldn't get to grips with this dull and repetitive story of two men pushing sixty and getting drunk around Dublin whilst they bring each other up to date with their lives. Sort of. Mostly they just go around and around in circles swearing a lot and saying very little.

Joe has left his wife and kids to set up home with a girl he fancied nearly 40 years before who showed up at a school parents' evening. Davie now lives in England with his wife Faye (probably the most interesting character in the book) and is visiting his father. He wants to tell Joe something really important but never quite seems to get around to it. The book rambles around as the two men stagger between pubs they knew when they were younger. It flips back and forth between their past and their present. If you concentrate really hard, you might just about be able to follow the rantings of a pair of drunk men.

Doyle is pretty famous for his ear for dialogue and this book is mostly dialogue. Good luck trying to work out who's saying what. It's oddly punctuated - really oddly. It uses long dashes instead of speech marks and sometimes both speak on the same line, sometimes just the one. It's confusing as hell.

Perhaps it's the pre-publication status of the ebook I had - I'm REALLY hoping that it's going to get improved before it goes on general release - perhaps we're supposed to read portrait rather than landscape on a kindle (honestly, I don't know) but the layout is all over the place. Lines are often only 2/3 of the page, sometimes a sentence is split across two lines with a bit gap in between. It's just too much work for the literary reward.

I've not read Doyle since the 1990s. I recall thinking he was pretty good back in the day. I just don't know what's happened since then. Faithful fans may think it's a staggering work of great genius and say that those of us who can't see it as more than 'two old men in a pub getting drunk' are Philistines. Honestly, I don't really care. If I met these two in a pub, I'd walk out again. I don't want to spend time with drunk old men and I rather resent the hours I spent reading about these two, hoping that something might actually happen towards the end.

I abandoned this at 30%. The dialogue skipping back and forth without proper punctuation or joining phrases means I keep having to go back a few lines to work out who's talking. And I fear they're having the dullest conversation - it certainly reminds me of nights down the pub, but then who really wants to be reminded of how rambling, confused and downright banal we all become once we have a few too many.? Not me.

I won't be posting a review since I didn't read enough of it to make it worthwhile. Thanks anyway for letting me try it.

It is many years since I read a Roddy Doyle book, so I was interested to see how I got on with this new one, because I have always had an ambivalent attitude to his style. I found ‘Love' just as irritating to read, but still equally compulsive so I had to read my way to the end. When I got there, I wondered whether I had wasted my time. Doyle has some interesting and thought provoking things to say about various forms of love we have in our lives, but filtering it through the stop start maunderings of two increasingly drunk characters made it less interesting than it should have been. I found myself telling them to juts get on with it - which is a measure of how accurate his ear is for the self indulgent conversation of the drunk on the bar-room stool! None the less, Doyle’s voice is still as unique as ever, so it’s certainly valuable reading for any writing student.

Whilst I liked the idea behind this book - 2 men talking in a pub, getting more & more drunk, & talking about life & love - the execution of it left me cold. Actually, not even cold. It left me cross, because it goes on for so long. Perhaps that was meant to be part of it, perhaps the humour is supposed to lie in the fact that the 2 drunk men have a mostly incoherent conversation, going over the same ground, over and over, and never seeming to get to the actual crux of the 'story', such as it is. But it just drove me crazy, trying to figure out who was talking half the time, or what they were talking about, and whether Joe was *ever* going to get to the point of his story or not?!

I was slightly more interested in the sub-story of Davy's life with his wife, Faye. But since that keeps getting interrupted to go back to the drunken pub mess, I soon lost patience with that too.

I stuck to the end, just to see it through, and I did actually enjoy the final moments. But not enough to make me feel any better about the book as a whole.

Love Roddy Doyle Books. I come from Belfast but have family in Dublin. I like the storyline the funny and serious writing. The sayings are funny if you understand the Irish lingo. Definitely worth reading

'There is a reason why men don't talk about their feelings. It's not just that it's difficult, or embarrassing. It's almost impossible. The words aren't really there.'

Old friends Davy and Joe meet up in Dublin for one hell of a pub crawl. Over the course of the day they both face up to their lives and what has changed: for Joe it is trying to explain how he has come to leave his wife and start a relationship with a woman whom, as younger men, they both loved; for Davy, he has come back to Ireland from his home in England to be with his father, dying from cancer. As the drink flows, and memories from their lives weave together with their current situation, the dialogue becomes more elusive, the truth harder to grasp.

This is a strong, almost visceral novel from Roddy Doyle. It reads, mostly, like a film or stage script, very much focused on dialogue with little or no description. As the two men both resume the dynamics of their old friendship, and try to deal with the changes since they last met, there is a lot of discussion about relationships, male friendship and family responsibilities. Once you can get your ear attuned to the dialogue, and stop necessarily trying to work out exactly who is speaking at any given moment, then you find yourself immersed in this friendship.

But - ah yes, the but - this, by the very nature of how Doyle has written the book, has to be compared to other recent Irish novels where dialogue dominates the book. All Irish writers stand in the long shadow of those titans who came before them - Yeats, Joyce, Beckett. In novels, this dialogue-led form has most recently been seen in Conor O'Callaghan's 'We Are Not in the World' (where a father and daughter drive through France), and of course last year's Booker-nominated 'Night Boat to Tangier' by Kevin Barry. The latter, in particular, gives a fantastic point of comparison, being pretty much a conversation between two late-middle-aged men about relationships, family etc. For me, this just doesn't have the emotional impact of Conor O'Callaghan's book, and certainly doesn't stand up against the sublime writing of Kevin Barry. Somehow, the characters of Joe and Davy just didn't come together for me, and the only real emotional impact came right at the end with a (perhaps too contrived?) conclusion.

It's good, but it's not great. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because, yes, Doyle can write sentences that punch you in the gut and make you realise how good he is. At points he just gets what it is to be a certain kind of man:

'We were glowing - I was sure we were glowing. We were fresh again, young again, hilarious. In the world of men - even though there were more women in the place than men. And that, somehow, made it even more a world of men. We were the men at the bar.
He drank. He swallowed.
- Good pint.
- Good pint.
- Good pub.
- Very good pub.
- Good to be here.
- Yeah.'

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Roddy Doyle explores the nature of the myriad forms of love through the lens of a friendship between two men, Joe and Davy, past middle age, who have known each other since childhood in this novel that could successfully serve as a script for a play. The narrative is dialogue heavy as the two men meet after not seeing each other for quite some time, each with secrets, and spans an evening, drink after drink, as they move from pub to pub in Dublin, getting more and more inebriated and incoherent. They discuss philosophy, reflect on their lives, how they came to be where they are now, the nostalgia that emerges of their younger selves, their ribald, mischief ridden behaviour in their shared past history. Joe has left his long term marriage to Trish and his family for the mysterious and enigmatic Jessica, a woman that Davy knows, once the woman of their dreams, engaging in a self justification exercise as to why he did this as Davy probes him further.

Davy, is married to Faye with the impact she has on his life, had a problematic relationship with his father, has long since left Ireland and settled in England. His father is dying in a hospice, the reason for him wanting to meet Joe at this time becomes clearer later on. In a humorous, comic and witty story, Doyle looks at masculinity, the ways that men bond, the anatomy of the love and friendship between Joe and Davy, the hazy nature of memories, of loss, parents and children, heartbreak, and marriage. The narrative meanders, in much the way a drunken dialogue between friends can be in reality and along with the lack of a plot may result in it not appealing to some readers. I appreciated Doyle's skills in dialogue and his deft touches of humour, and his focus on love and life through Joe and Davy. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.

Two grown Irish men, childhood friends, meet up and one of them confesses to the other that he had bumped into a woman he was in love with 30-odd years ago. He’s since left his wife and children. And they talk...and talk...aaaand talk.
It was like wading through treacle with flippers - uphill.
I’m sorry, I stuck it out to 20% but then total fatigue set in - a DNF for me

I would say this novel borders on 'experimental' and original if I hadn't already read Vesna Main's 'Good Day?' which is also a novel based entirely on dialogue. Main, however, I'm sad to say here, does it better.

In 'Love', the two characters, Joe and Davy, get more and more drunk, and the discussion borders on philosophy and how their lives have worked out. Though I love the idea of this, and I really, truly wanted to like it. I just didn't think it worked. Perhaps, with a novel like this, the reader has to really commit to understand precisely what's going on. There's no doubt that there are some excellent witticisms and the use of dialect is very well done and the idea of two men actually talking about their lives and their relationships is a good one, but though I know it's perfectly fine to leave questions unanswered, there were just a few too many here for me.

Of course, the title of the novel gives away the main theme, which is different types of love - fatherly, husbandly, filled with lust, regrettable and so on, but the main 'love' is between the two men who demonstrate, through their conversation, what love through such a tight friendship is. This is a great idea, and I'm disappointed it didn't work for me.

With all Roddy Doyle books it can take a few pages to get used to his distinctive style of storytelling and dialogue, but once you're there he manages to spin yarns in a way that no other author can, chopping and changing through time and stories, sometimes nesting 3 at once, and still keeping you gripped and aware of what is going on.

I really enjoyed this book - cleverly set over a single evening, with a lot of flashbacks to add context. There were also flashes of that excellent humour of Doyle's. But don't expect the whole book to have you in fits of laughter like some of his other works.

Whilst the story is great, there are definitely - and seemingly intentional - elements of wanting the characters to cut to the chase. There might be 5 pages on the interior of a pub, whereas you get a whole backstory of a character in 2, it's just his style and I'm sure he'll be happy that I left with that element of wanting to Joe to just get on with it!

Really enjoyable though, and highly relatable too - which is another of Roddy Doyle's talents. He knows how to convey the normality of life in a poetic way.

I liked the style and flow of this book, and the concept was well-executed. I just think it was a little overly long, and could have been as effective (maybe even more?) in a shorter form. It raises some pertinent and universal questions about life, memory, family, friends, and love. Not a lot happens, so I would avoid it if you’re not a fan of lack of plot, and therefore not much of it landed with me. It wasn’t as affecting as I wanted it to be, and feel it could have been.

I found this an enjoyable read over all, though it was at times difficult to work out who was speaking. This was mainly to do with the formatting of the ebook - one character's lines running into the other's - and the lack of speech marks. Ultimately, this didn't seem to matter as both characters spoke in a similar manner and had similar outlooks. It is almost entirely dialogue with little description but this works well enough as it's mainly set in pubs and we all know what pubs look like.

It is a little long drawn out and repetitive - a realistic enough depiction of two men getting drunker and drunker. I lost count of how many pints they drank and began to wonder if it was actually possible to consume that many in the course of an afternoon and evening. I guess some people manage it.

I found the female characters difficult to warm to - Jess was only lightly sketched in and I got no real sense of her, and Faye was extremely irritating. Trish might have been interesting but again, there wasn't enough of her for us to find out.

An interesting experiment then, and a good enough read. But not a book I would rave over.

I love Roddy Doyle's books and was so looking forward to reading this pre-copy thanks to Netgalley. This one is totally different to his earlier works but still as mesmerising. Storyline is set over one afternoon and evening spent in the company of two lifelong friends one of whom is pouring out his heart and woes, the other is holding his emotions and resentment back. Such good writing as always. Reading his books you become bonafide Irish!! I could not stop reading this.. Fantastic.