Smile ? classic Roddy Doyle, but with a shocking twist ? opens with the 54-year-old narrator, Victor, alone in a Dublin pub. He doesn?t share a home with Rachel, the woman he calls his wife, but is vague about why. He feels out of place. When he says, ?Good man; thanks very much? to the guy pulling his pint, he immediately tells us ?the words felt great and a bit forbidden. I hadn?t earned the right to slip into the rhythm of a middle-aged Dub.?
Why not? Unease grows when a former classmate who might be called Eddie Fitzpatrick ? at least that?s how Victor thinks he remembers him ? accosts him in the pub, raising uncomfortable memories of the Christian Brothers school they went to. They?re the same age and their fathers died in the same month; people in the bar take Fitzpatrick for Victor?s brother or his cousin.