Description

From the Booker Prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments: the story of an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after reading.

‘He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It’s as simple as that’

Paula Spencer is thirty-nine, the mother of four and learning to live without Charlo, her violent, abusive husband.

Paula’s started drinking more and dreaming more, taking herself back to her contented childhood and audacious teenage years. Everything was better then, not least the music, the soundtrack to her romance with Charlo. As the past floats by and mingles with the present Paula Spencer finds herself coming alive, in all her vulnerability and her strength.

‘Roddy Doyle’s unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood’ The Times

Publisher Review

It is the triumph of this novel that Doyle - entirely without condescension - shows the inner life of this battered housewife to be the same stuff as that of the heroes of the great novels of Europe -- Mary Gordon * New York Times Book Review * In feeling the pulse of a raw Dublin suburb, Doyle is recording a beat that can be recognised all over the world * The Times * This new novel is Roddy Doyle's best to date. I cannot recall any writer who has better captured the vulnerability and courage of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage * Cork Examiner * Even more mesmerizing than his prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha * Daily Mail * Impassioned, dignified and richly humane * Independent * His best work yet * The Times * Compulsively readable * Financial Times *