Paula Spencer

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 caf 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