[DUH]⇒ Libro Free Paula Spencer Roddy Doyle 9780670038169 Books

Paula Spencer Roddy Doyle 9780670038169 Books

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Paula Spencer Roddy Doyle 9780670038169 Books

"Paula Spencer," published about a decade later than its prequel, "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors," is a quieter, but just as moving, story. The reader, who was introduced to Paula as a working class Irishwoman struggling with alcoholism and an abusive husband, now finds her recovering from alcoholism but still coping with family problems, after her husband passed away. She has a job cleaning houses, which has its perks, she winds up seeing the White Stripes in concert. The book's scenes center around her attempts to reconcile with her four children, two of whom are addicts, and relationship with her sisters, who are dealing with trials of their own.

This book is less dramatic (no murders or first person descriptions of abuse) but equally black humored and engaging. Recommended.


Tags : Paula Spencer [Roddy Doyle] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Picking up nearly ten years after the tale, <IT>The Woman Who Walked into Doors, <RO>Dublin widow Paula begins her fifth month of sobriety while endeavoring to raise the two children who are still at home,Roddy Doyle,Paula Spencer,Viking Adult,0670038164,Literary,Recovering alcoholics;Fiction.,Widows;Fiction.,Women household employees;Fiction.,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,General,Recovering alcoholics,Widows,Women domestics

Paula Spencer Roddy Doyle 9780670038169 Books Reviews

Continuing the story of Paula Spencer, the main character in his 1997 novel, The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Booker Prize-winning author Roddy Doyle focuses on a survivor of horrific spousal abuse, a woman who has been on her own now for twelve years, and whose husband Charlo has been dead for eleven of those years. For this entire period, however, Paula has been lost in a fog of alcohol, and her eldest daughter Nicola has been the "mother" of the family and Paula's own caretaker.

As the novel opens, Paula has been sober for four months, and as we watch the unfolding of her life for most of the ensuing year, we see every detail of her struggle to become responsible for the family and regain their trust. All the family has problems. Nicola, now married, was forced to be "mother" of the family while still a child herself; her brother John Paul, became addicted to heroin at age fourteen and ran away; Leanne, now twenty-two, lives at home, an alcoholic; and Jack, nearly sixteen, is closed off from his mother.

The novel, almost plotless, is an intense study of Paula's growth as she goes through the business of living an "ordinary" life--cleaning houses by day and offices by night, fretting about money and her need for a new coat, doing the family wash and making soup, visiting her senile mother, saving for a computer for Jack, and, most importantly, staying off alcohol. As Doyle takes us step by painful step through Paula's mundane reality, we see her slowly growing and taking control for the first time since her marriage. As she gains confidence, she works to reconnect with her sisters, form new relationships, and, clumsily, to become a real mother.

Doyle's style perfectly suits Paula's first-person narrative--short staccato sentences which reflect her nervous attention to simple actions, a style which concentrates on Paula's reactions to what is happening around her, rather than on description. Her internal monologue and her conversations with her children and sisters reveal her past history and her present hopes and dreams. Abrupt and sometimes terse, Doyle's narrative style reflects Paula's gradual progress and her small victories, the prosaic details told in the simple style of a woman who sees her life as a series of small steps. The limited scope of Paula's life and her everyday problems open up to reveal universal themes and truths, the age-old yearning to become independent, to accept responsibility, and to achieve personal respect. A memorable, carefully drawn study of the human spirit as it renews itself. n Mary Whipple
Paula Spencer was "The Woman Who Ran Into Doors" in Roddy Doyle's novel of that title. In it she was thirty-nine, an alcoholic, and only recently escaped from seventeen years as a battered wife. The eponymous PAULA SPENCER picks up her story nine years later -- from just before her forty-eighth birthday to the day of her forty-ninth. As the novel begins she hasn't had a drink in four months, but abstinence is a daily battle, made more difficult by the fact that the twenty-two-year-old daughter who lives with her is now an alco. On the flip side, her older son John Paul has kicked his heroin habit, though Paula's relationship with him is still strained. But she's trying. She's trying with all four of her children, and with her sisters, and with her mother. PAULA SPENCER is about coping, about being a mother, and about learning to accept people (including one's self) for who they are.

The scene is still Dublin; the time of the novel is 2004-05. One of the ways in which Paula's life has improved is that she has a bit of discretionary income (since she's no longer spending everything on booze). She now has a telly that works, a toaster, a cell phone, and a CD-player and a CD by U2. (She had never heard of them before, even though they came from her part of Dublin; "she was being hammered, battered to the floor, while they were becoming famous".) She has been promoted to the head of the cleaning crew for two floors of the downtown office building where she works weekday evenings, and she even has opened a bank account. Despite all that has happened to her and despite her aching bones, life's grand.

The aspects of the novel that remain with the reader are its humanity, especially its compassion, and its life-sustaining humor. It is packed with keenly observed and crisply rendered quotidian details. And it contains some wonderful set pieces, the best of which involve get-togethers between Paula and her two sisters. In one of them, her younger sister Denise lets it drop that she is having an affair. In another, older tough-as-nails Carmen announces that she has breast cancer. Life can be rough, but these three women confront it with uncouth aplomb and their repartee dazzles.

Roddy Doyle's style is an idiosyncratic one. He uses clipped sentences; he frequently inserts bits of internal monologue; and he forgoes quotation marks. His writing can be mildly disconcerting to a reader first coming to him. But most readers adjust quickly, and both the Paula Spencer novels are relatively easy going. My guess is that readers fairly whip through the second half of both novels, by then fully acclimated to Doyle's style and caught up in the story of Paula Spencer.

"The Woman Who Ran Into Doors" was a wonderful novel. PAULA SPENCER is even better. But I urge reading "The Woman Who Ran Into Doors" first; one will appreciate PAULA SPENCER all the more when she gets to it.
deeply beautiful book!
Great book, mint condition
This novel is very engaging and entertaining. The story revolves around a recovering alcoholic mother/widow. I would highly recommend it to any adult.
I had to know how Paula Spencer survived. I want another sequel.
"Paula Spencer," published about a decade later than its prequel, "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors," is a quieter, but just as moving, story. The reader, who was introduced to Paula as a working class Irishwoman struggling with alcoholism and an abusive husband, now finds her recovering from alcoholism but still coping with family problems, after her husband passed away. She has a job cleaning houses, which has its perks, she winds up seeing the White Stripes in concert. The book's scenes center around her attempts to reconcile with her four children, two of whom are addicts, and relationship with her sisters, who are dealing with trials of their own.

This book is less dramatic (no murders or first person descriptions of abuse) but equally black humored and engaging. Recommended.