Love

Davy and Joe have got a lot to catch up on.

Drinking pals back in their Dublin days, Davy rarely sees Joe for a pint anymore – maybe one or two when Davy’s over from England to check in on his elderly father. But tonight, one pint will turn to three, and then five as Joe recounts a secret, leading the two men on a bender back to the haunts of their youth.

Joe has left his wife and family for another woman, Jessica. Davy knows her too, or he should – she was the girl of their dreams all those years ago, the girl with the cello in George’s Pub. As Joe’s story unfolds across Dublin – pub after pub – so too do the memories of what eventually drove Davy from Ireland: his first meeting with Faye, the woman that would become his wife; his father’s sombre disapproval; the pained spaces left behind when a parent dies.

As much a hymn to the Dublin and the pubs of one’s youth as a delightfully comic, yet moving portrait of what it means to try to put into words the many forms love can take, Love marks a triumphant new turn for Roddy Doyle.