Irish Author Roddy Doyle On Connecting Over A Pint, At Pubs And Over Zoom

By Kathryn Fink

Published Jun 22, 2020 12:07 PM

Listen • 34:52

Pints of freshly poured Guinness, poured from the back of the Hatfield House pub's converted delivery van, sit on the pavement before being collected by customers, after being delivered, to a customers' front door, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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For decades, Roddy Doyle’s work has been in a field of its own — mostly an Irish one.

He’s the Booker Prize-winning author of “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.”

His latest novel, “Love,” is about two old friends having a pint of Guinness in a pub — a centerpiece of Irish life that’s become a relic during the coronavirus pandemic.

From The New York Times:

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When I tell you that Roddy Doyle’s new novel, “Love,” is about two 50-ish men talking well-oiled talk in a pub, you’ll say you’ve heard that one before. You haven’t. When I tell you that the novel isn’t so much about what happens, or happened once upon a time, as it is about the mystically inaccurate nature of language, you’ll say you learned that lesson long ago. You didn’t, at least not the way Doyle spins it. When I tell you that in spite of these familiarities, you’ll wind up caring about a bond that seems to rely mainly on words, you’ll say you won’t. You will.

We ask Doyle about three decades of writing novels, life during the pandemic and what Brexit could mean for the relationship between Ireland and Northern Ireland.