Doyle springs a surprise with brilliant simplicity

Fiction: Smile, By Roddy Doyle, Jonathan Cape, €17.25

Victor Forde, the narrator of Roddy Doyle’s tenth novel, appears, at first glance, to be a familiar sort of character in a familiar sort of predicament: he’s a middle-aged man, estranged from his family, haunted by his past, and morosely adrift in a changed and changing Dublin. Separated from his wife, the wealthy and glamorous Rachel (she hosts an entrepreneurial reality show on RTÉ called ...