A Paula Spencer Novel

Paula Spencer is a 39-year-old working-class woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and a worsening drinking problem. Paula recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her feeling powerless. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Roddy Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable.

Paula O'Leary is hugely popular with the boys from her working-class Dublin neighbourhood. But it is the charming Charlo Spencer who finally gets her. Yet after their honeymoon, everything changes. When Charlo first strikes her, she is stunned. But as his violent outbursts develop from slaps and bruises to broken fingers and knocked-out teeth, she gradually loses all self-respect, denying how bleak things are and drinking heavily.

Paula Spencer begins on the eve of Paula's 48th birthday. She 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.

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer—mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor—has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, her boyfriend Joe is a text away when she needs him, and her four children now have the healthy families and petty dramas that Paula could have only hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside. That is until her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day.