Love, by Roddy Doyle

I talk to anyone who will listen to me, and many people who don't want to listen to me, about my dream of a novel told from two perspectives: alternating from one to the other, showing how our relationships are built on misunderstandings and misalignments. I think a lot of the time we think we're on the same page as a lover/partner/person, but it's just an illusion, a coincidence, and then the wrenching happens when we discover that we aren't. (I think this/it would be an amazing novel, and I did try to write it for a while, and I hope I'll get back to it someday, when I'm better at the writing).

Anyway. A little while back a friend went for a walk in the park and met a random old couple -- I think they were an old couple?, I wasn't there, I don't know -- who started talking about Love, by Roddy Doyle, which they described as a novel told from two perspectives. And my friend came back and reported this to me, and I felt terribly pleased because:

1) I had successfully set up a scouting network for novels-from-two-perspectives -- like some kind of power-broker in a movie, summoning a naive young novel-from-two-perspectives up to my top-floor office, and the novel squeals "how did you even know about me?!?!?," and I smile and say "I have my ways"

2) is there a more delightful source for a book recommendation than "an untraceable random old couple in a park?" (I mean, is that universally delightful, or is there something about my personal sensibility that makes it particularly appealing?)

Anyway. Love, by Roddy Doyle, is not a novel told from two perspectives. I started to suspect as much fairly early on, but there was an early mention of the TV show The Affair, which is told from two perspectives, and which made me wonder whether the second-perspective of this story might be brought back in later on: it's kind of weird to think that I'll (probably) be the only person who ever reads this book half-waiting for a second perspective on the same events, because nothing else about the book really suggests that that's going to happen, and presumably in some fun way that slightly-changed my experience of it.

Anyway. It's actually a novel told by two characters, talking to each other -- that is, it's largely composed of dialogue. And at the beginning I was delighted with it, smitten with it, but I can't in good conscience recommend it: the writer is very talented, some moments and observations are phenomenal, but:

1) the book is just too damn long, and

2) the original narrative tension / drama just isn't satisfyingly resolved, in my view, the author made a bunch of early "promises" that he never really delivered on. And so the roundabout dialogue-y style of the book went from charming to very annoying, when I realised it was just going round in circles and was never going to lead to the Dramatic Reveal/Resolution that (I think) we were promised.

I would very much like to see this same novel edited and with an altered ending by Kazuo Ishiguro -- does that ever happen with books, or only movies? Ishiguro would keep all the sly, beautiful, indirect revelations about human behaviour, but would make them come together in a more coherent theme and a more satisfying dramatic arc.

Anyway. It turns out the real Love is the friends we made along the way.