Paula Spencer (Paperback, New Ed)

An intimate, humane portrait of a working-class Irish woman's pleasures and struggles in her first year of sobriety.Doyle fans first met Paula Spencer in Doyle's critically acclaimed novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996), the story of Paula's alcoholism, her marriage to the wild, abusive Charlo and their four children. This book opens eight years later, on Paula's 47th birthday. Charlo is dead, two of Paula's children are grown and have children of their own and Paula is four months and five days sober. Some big things happen in this novel-fights, sickness, reconciliation-but they are not the story's focus. Instead, Doyle employs his trademark narrative style, an almost exclusive use of dialogue and fragmented inner monologue, to convey the thousand tiny moments of despair and triumph that make up Paula's daily life. To the middle- class observer, Paula lives a drab, working-class existence cleaning houses and stadiums in Dublin. But to be an ordinary person is a source of great joy to Paula. Like a woman who has returned from the verge of death, she can't get over her luck. That she has money in her pocket and the occasional day off from work, that she is able to savor good coffee in the Italian cafe in her neighborhood where, she's pleased to note, they trust her not to run off without paying-all are sources of joy. "It's grand," Paula says. As she gradually builds a new life, it's a phrase she uses again and again.Profound, subtle and unsentimental-the latest from a master back in top form. (Kirkus Reviews)

Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Booker Prize-winning author, Roddy Doyle, returns to one of his greatest characters, Paula Spencer. Paula Spencer is turning forty-eight, and hasn't had a drink for four months and five days. Her youngest children, Jack and Leanne, are still living with her. They're grand kids, but she worries about Leanne. Paula still works as a cleaner, but all the others doing the job seem to come from Eastern Europe. You can get a cappuccino in the cafe and the checkout girls are all Nigerian. Ireland is certainly changing, but then so too is Paula - dry, and determined to put her family back together again. 'A phenomenally rewarding read... Could not be bettered in its depiction of the minutiae of the life of a recovering alcoholic: relentless, trivial, terrified' Observer

General

Imprint:	Vintage
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	July 2007
First published:	July 2007
Authors:	Roddy Doyle
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 17mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	288
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-09-950137-4
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction Promotions
LSN:	0-09-950137-6
Barcode:	9780099501374

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