While less dedicated or prolific writers were off boozing with their mates down the local, Roddy Doyle has spent almost a decade writing about it. From 2012-2019, he published three novels – Two Pints, Two More Pints, Two for the Road – in which two sixtysomething Irish men chatted over Guinness, their alcohol units far beyond those specified in the titles.
Comprising only dialogue without even character names, the books seemed to call for dramatic form and, in 2017, Doyle premiered a play titled Two Pints in a Dublin pub, the speakers now distinguished as One and Two, tended by Raymond, an almost-silent barman. During lockdown, Doyle added six online duologues, The Zoom Pints, in which the men spoke while drinking alone at home. The collected craic packs a 432-page paperback – The Complete Two Pints.
