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Paula Spencer
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  • Published: 3 September 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099501374
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99

Paula Spencer

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sept 2010
Audiobook
7 Sept 2006
Audio CD
2 Oct 2006
Paperback
3 Sept 2007
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Ten years on from The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle returns to one of his greatest characters, 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 café 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
  • Published: 3 September 2007
  • ISBN: 9780099501374
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of twelve acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van and Smile, two collections of short stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

portrait photo of Roddy Doyle

Also by Roddy Doyle

Jeeves Again
The Women Behind the Door
Life Without Children
The Complete Two Pints
Love
Two for the Road
Charlie Savage
See all

Praise for Paula Spencer

[A] marvellous novel

Carmen Callil, Financial Times

Doyle has created a little masterwork, a gem of persuasive realism

Tom Adair, Scotland on Sunday

An intoxicating sequel...a phenomenally rewarding read

Euan Ferguson, Observer

Paula is a triumphantly original character, and her gently anarchic sense of humour, her ruthless honesty and the bursting sense of fun that permeates the book scotch any hint of sentimentalism. Doyle constructs his set-pieces and orders the narrative with a craft so unobtrustively elegant and clever that it demands a second reading. This is a splendid piece of work

Independent on Sunday

[A] magnificent achievement

Guardian

Doyle's writing is as sharp as ever. Sentences snap out from the page, some so short they only contain one word... Paula Spencer has come into her own and Roddy Doyle has gained a comfortable and wholly convincing access into the female mind

Irish Times

This is a magnificent novel...not once does Doyle offer any sentimental cop-out or wallow in bleakness... It's a disciplined piece of writing, full of humour and immense empathy - and what more can you ask than that?

Scotsman

There is an intense pleasure in the reading of this book

Claudia Fitzherbert, Telegraph

A complex and intricate portrait of an unlikely, yet likable, heroine

Calum Macdonald, The Herald

Roddy Doyle has done the impossible - he has made Paula Spencer even more unforgettable the second time round

The Times