The May 2025 (or # 147) edition of The Session wants to “take us out of the ‘real world’ for a moment to share the beers and pubs in art and fiction that have grabbed our attention, whether they were sublime, surprising, moving, amusing, somehow significant, or symbolic of something — or awkward and out of place, if you like.”
Since I will be in Ireland when this post will go live, what immediately came to mind was the novel, Love by Roddy Doyle. The author who you may know as the writer of The Commitments. It is a book that could be more specifically titled Dublin Pub Crawl or The Really Long Session as it follows Davy and Joe, two friends who have reconnected later in life and who both have a River Liffey full of water under the bridge as it were. Each pub and each pint brings new revelations but also paints a picture of how life passes and becomes filled with memories and actions both good and bad and imagined.
I won’t go into specific plot points because the different pubs like Sheehans, George’s, The Sheds, Grogans become a third character, more than just a setting, akin to a vibe as Davy and Joe reminisce and bicker in equal measure and those words hang in there like the smoke that encases an Irish pub even years after smoking was banned.
And the beer in the book has that same lived in feel, this isn’t some made up beer name or brewery. No this is a pint of Harp, golden in the glass. You can see it sitting on the bar in the branded glass. You can imagine you and your bestie a few pints in and talking more emotionally and about moments that have been hidden from view as your tongue is loosened a bit.
I have read other books where characters go to a brewery and order an IPA or one of the friends works at a brewery and it is cool to read a shout out but it rarely goes much deeper than that which is why I appreciate a book like Love.