Roddy Doyle returns to Paula Spencer with the tale of her fight for a better future. Paula is now forty-seven years old. Her husband is long dead, and it's been four months and five days since she's had a drink. Two of her children are out of the house - John Paul, a recovering heroin addict, and Nicola, a successful sales rep - but twenty-two-year-old Leanne, who herself has a problem with alcohol, and sixteen-year-old Jack are still at home. Paula continues to work as a house and office cleaner and to live from paycheck to paycheck; she's feeling pretty washed up and hopeless. But as she manages to get through each day sober, she begins to piece her life back together and to resurrect her family. She's even met a man at the bottle return; he's nice, there's something steady about him. Told with the unmistakable wit of Doyle's extraordinary voice, this is a redemptive tale about a brave and tenacious woman. Surviving an abusive marriage was an enormous triumph for Dublin housewife Paula Spencer. Her frequent beatings by husband Charlo, coupled with the alcohol she consumed to dull the pain, left her life a black hole of misery and degradation, which she recounted in her own voice in The Woman Who Walked into Doors (1996). Ten years later, Doyle resurrects his heroine . Now recently sober and trying to maintain some semblance of normality in her family life, Paula fights battles that are small, but the stakes are extremely high. Be it just trying to ask her daughter what time she came home last night or tousle her son's hair, after her ignoble history, every act is loaded with significance. Nicola, Paula's eldest, took on many of the maternal roles Paula was incapable of doing herself. Now, the ever-present guilt and the constant need for a drink plague her. How can she regain parental authority? Will her children ever trust her again? Doyle is masterful at setting up the battles as Paula takes each day at a time. His dialogue, thick with Dublinese, expertly evokes the working-class Irish milieu. Although the third-person narration will make some readers miss Paula's voice, this is Paula's story--and it's grand. Benjamin Segedin Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Paula Spencer is written with an immediacy that makes us feel like we've crawled inside her head...Doyle's pacing is extraordinary...the remarkable intimacy achieved using third-person narrative is partly what's enthralling here, but it's also the humanity, wit, and stubborn resilience...Doyle's new novel is an utterly convincing, worthy sequel. -- San Francisco Chronicle , front page A tale of ultimate personal struggle, and told superbly...[The book's] sparseness serves to ratchet up its intensity, compressing every episode and emotion... Paula Spencer is neither gloomy nor glib. It is not patronizing or falsely melodramatic. Instead it brims with compassion and acuity and Mr. Doyle shines a light on a supposedly ordinary life, tenderly illuminating its extraordinary contours. -- The Wall Street Journal As was the case with The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, Doyle's ability to capture the restlessness of his title character's mind makes Paula Spencer a nakedly personal tale...this is a book about a brave woman living a life of work and family. This is as real as realism gets. -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution Beautifully nuanced and sweetly populist...It's a testament to Roddy Doyle's restrained, dryly funny writing that you walk away from his novel Paula Spencer rooting for the tattered yet doggedly optimistic husk of a woman trying to stay sober...this working woman's life of quiet, nearly impoverished desperation doesn't, on the surface, make for page-turning adventure. But you'll stick with Paula as Doyle gently celebrates her small but memorable victories. -- USA Today Engrossing...Doyle's love of language and his acute ear for dialogue keep his narrative thrumming, and Spencer's reaction to her circumstances is inspiring. This is an extraordinary story about an ordinary life that requires almost no suspension of disbelief. -- People Magazine Sobriety is a slow and steady process and while chronicling it gives Paula Spencer less of a dramatic arc than the one that enlivened The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, the stakes in the sequel - redemption and forgiveness - are every bit as high. -- The Christian Science Monitor Roddy Doyle is the author of seven previous novels. The Commitments, The Snapper , and The Van have been adapted into films. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the 1993 Booker Prize. The Woman Who Walked into Doors and A Star Called Henry were international bestsellers. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker and McSweeneyÂ’s . Reviewed by James Hynes Ten years ago, in his superb novel The Woman Who Walked into Doors, the Irish writer Roddy Doyle introduced his readers to Paula Spencer, a tough, passionate, alcoholic Irishwoman with a foul mouth and an unsparing w