Bought Roddy Doyle’s The Dead Republic in an airport bookstore in Vienna, his capper to the saga of Henry Smart (and Ireland, by extension) that he began with A Star Called Henry in ‘99. Unavoidably lumpy — long stretches of it feel saggy, like Doyle’s chewing through plot and shoving characters around the board to get to the next part he’s interested in writing — but those bits, those sequences you can tell were the reason he made the book, they really sing.

There’s also this, an offhand glimpse in the middle of a conversation, which is as nice a way as anything of thinking about writing & memory & memorializing. I’ll transcribe the whole run-up, without knowing if it makes sense, but knowing that it damn well doesn’t work if it’s not at the bottom of a pile.

—I had a sister called Grace, I told Bill.
I was sitting beside him as he took us through the desert, into more serious desert.
—That right? he said.
—Yeah.
—Back home in Ireland.
—Yeah.
—What was she like?
—I don’t know, I said.
I’d a feeling Gracie had died before I was born. I seemed to know that — I wasn’t sure. But I knew the name, and I’d always known it.
We’d been driving a long time, in and out of darkness and into settled daytime. We’d gone past towns and the signs for towns before I remembered that I’d wanted to know their names. Barstow, Ludlow, and Bagdad. We crossed the Colorado River at Bullhead City. I’d been in that water before. I’d washed myself at the bend I looked down at as Bill drove us past. But I didn’t recognize the name, Bullhead.
—New city, said Bill.—Built to support the Davis Dam construction. Got a new name too.
—What was the old one? I asked.
—When I came out this way with Mister Ford before the war, I seem to remember it being called Hardyville.
That name meant nothing either. But I’d been there.
I took the notebook from my jacket pocket. I opened the page I wanted.
— And Victor? said Bill.
—My brother.
—Remember him?
—Yeah, I said.—I do.
I looked at the burnt rubber lines, left where the cars had gone off the road. We kept rolling over them. There were hundreds of the lines, but none of the cars.