Page 45 Review by Stephen
Funny, cringe-inducing, yet refreshingly optimistic.
"Dude. He's not coming. Just eat.
"...No. I refuse to be cynical. I am an optimist. I believe in hope."
"I 'hope' you're hungry enough to eat two meals."
Brad ordered about 30 minutes ago. Around the time his date, Bernie, disappeared down the 45-degree street, past that cafe window, on a brake-broken bicycle, heading straight for the river.
"Aw, c'mon. Dating is all about hope.
"Hope in love.
"Hope that if you find the right person, your life will get easier.
"And if you can't believe in a cute, funny boy who was nice to you once... what can you believe in?"
"Hear! Hear!" calls a punter from the opposite end of the bistro.
But back to the brake-broken bicycle and unfortunately even from the bottom, for Bernie, it's been downhill ever since. You don't see many goats in city centres, do you?
Luke Healy has of late specialized in screechingly funny car-crash comics; the sort you peer tentatively through your fingers at, weeping and laughing all at the same time. The laughter tends to be quite high-pitched; close to a squeal.
And Luke's not averse to making himself the butt of jokes in what must surely, surely, surely be fabrications (SELF-ESTEEM AND THE END OF THE WORLD and THE CON ARTISTS), but here he eschews the illusion of autobiography and indeed the human altogether. Instead Healy presenting the hapless dating duo as dogs. There'll still be no let up on the cringe!
We follow Brad and Bernie from their ill-fated first encounter through further doom-laden dates punctuated by briefer romantic snap-shots, some of which say so much about our specific lovers' likes, some saying more about wider society's sorry trends. Yet there's a delirious innocence to it all, as well as an endearing, really quite determined optimism, almost immediately rewarded / rebutted by calamities; most provoked by a certain failure to pay attention...? Come clean...? Or comprehend reality...?
My favourite interloper was the psychotherapist introduced in the relatively late, mismatched proceedings - but, more specifically, his well earned comeuppance.
