Just moved in to a new apartment alone for the first time in years Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly's pub for a pint a slow one One evening his drink is interrupted A man in shorts & pink shirt brings over his pint & sits down He seems to know Victor's name & to remember him from school Says his name is Fitzpatrick Victor dislikes him on sight dislikes too the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers He prompts other memories too
- of Rachel his beautiful wife who became a celebrity & of Victor's own small claim to fame as the man who says the unsayable on the radio But it's the memories of school & of one particular Brother that he cannot control & which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous the razor-sharp dialogue the humour the superb evocation of childhood
- but this is a novel unlike any he has written before When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to re-evaluate everything you think you remember so clearly