The Woman Who Walked into Doors

The Woman Who Walked into Doors
Author: Roddy Doyle
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780140255126

"This unflinching novel chronicles a woman's relationship with a violent man in a way that brings fresh insight to the subject . . . engaging and uplifting." —O, The Oprah Magazine From the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, the heartrending story of a brave and tenacious housewife Paula Spencer is a thirty-nine-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 Spencer

Paula Spencer
Author: Roddy Doyle
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2008-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1407017977

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

The Northern Clemency

The Northern Clemency
Author: Philip Hensher
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 610
Release: 2008-10-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307271404

In 1974, the Sellers family is transplanted from London to Sheffield in northern England. On the day they move in, the Glover household across the street is in upheaval: convinced that his wife is having an affair, Malcolm Glover has suddenly disappeared. The reverberations of this rupture will echo through the years to come as the connection between the families deepens. But it will be the particular crises of ten-year-old Tim Glover—set off by two seemingly inconsequential but ultimately indelible acts of cruelty—that will erupt, full-blown, two decades later in a shocking conclusion. Expansive and deeply felt, The Northern Clemency shows Philip Hensher to be one of our most masterly chroniclers of modern life, and a storyteller of virtuosic gifts.

The Help

The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2011
Genre: African American women
ISBN: 0425245136

Original publication and copyright date: 2009.

A Star Called Henry

A Star Called Henry
Author: Roddy Doyle
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2010-06-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307375382

An historical novel like none before it, A Star Called Henry has marked a new chapter in Booker Prize-winner Roddy Doyle's writing. A subversive look behind the legends of Irish republicanism, at its centre a passionate and unforgettable love story, this novel is a triumphant work of fiction. Born in the slums of Dublin in 1902, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he's out robbing, begging, charming, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At fourteen, already six foot two, Henry's in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom. A year later he's ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian, and, soon, a killer. With his father's wooden leg as his weapon, Henry becomes a republican legend - one of Michael Collins' boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike, a lover.

Smile

Smile
Author: Roddy Doyle
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0735224455

From the author of the Booker Prize winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a bold, haunting novel about the uncertainty of memory and how we contend with the past. "It's his bravest novel yet; it's also, by far, his best." -- npr.org “The closest thing he’s written to a psychological thriller."– The New York Times Book Review Just moved into a new apartment, alone for the first time in years, Victor Forde goes every evening to Donnelly’s for a pint, a slow one. One evening his drink is interrupted. A man in shorts and a pink shirt comes over and sits down. He seems to know Victor’s name and to remember him from secondary school. His name is Fitzpatrick. Victor dislikes him on sight, dislikes, too, the memories that Fitzpatrick stirs up of five years being taught by the Christian Brothers. He prompts other memories—of Rachel, his beautiful wife who became a celebrity, and of Victor’s own small claim to fame, as the man who would say the unsayable on the radio. But it’s the memories of school, and of one particular brother, that Victor cannot control and which eventually threaten to destroy his sanity. Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humor, the superb evocation of adolescence, but this is a novel unlike any he has written before. When you finish the last page you will have been challenged to reevaluate everything you think you remember so clearly.

Inside Madeleine

Inside Madeleine
Author: Paula Bomer
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616953098

"With surgical insight, Inside Madeline delves into the most complex female territory imaginable and dissects until every honest bone is revealed. Bomer's prose doesn't flinch, doesn't filter—the bravery of these stories left me breathless.” —Alissa Nutting, author of Tampa From the author of Nine Months and Baby comes a daring new collection that seethes with alienation, lust and rage. Bomer takes us from hospitals, halfway houses, and alleyways, to boarding schools and Park Avenue penthouses, exploring the complex relationships girls have with their bodies, with other girls, and with boys. The title novella tracks the ins and outs of an outsider’s life: her childhood obesity and kinky sex life, her toxic relationships, whether familial or erotic, and her various disappearing acts, of body and mind.

The Snapper

The Snapper
Author: Roddy Doyle
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2008-12-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1409046486

Meet the Rabbitte family, motley bunch of loveable ne'er-do-wells whose everyday purgatory is rich with hangovers, dogshit and dirty dishes. When the older sister announces her pregnancy, the family are forced to rally together and discover the strangeness of intimacy. But the question remains: which friend of the family is the father of Sharon's child? By the bestselling author of The Commitments, now a long-running West End stage show. 'Unstoppable fun. A big-hearted, big-night out' The Times

How Late It Was How Late

How Late It Was How Late
Author: James Kelman
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-12-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1529112702

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE ‘A passionate, scintillating, brilliant song of a book’ Guardian Sammy's had a bad week. Most of it's just a blank space in his mind, and the bits that he can remember, he'd rather not. His wallet's gone, along with his new shoes, he's been arrested then beaten up by the police and thrown out on the street - and he's just gone blind. He remembers a row with his girlfriend, but she seems to have disappeared; and he might have been trying to fix a bit of business up with an old mate, he's not too sure. Things aren't looking too good for Sammy and his problems have hardly begun.

A Catskill Eagle

A Catskill Eagle
Author: Robert B. Parker
Publisher: Dell
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2010-07-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307754480

Susan's letter came from California: Hand was in jail, and she was on the run. Twenty-four hours later, Hawk is free, because Spenser has sprung him loose—for a brutal cross-country journey back to the East Coast. Now the two men are on a violent ride to find the woman Spenser loves, the man who took her, and the shocking reason so many people had to die. . . . Praise for A Catskill Eagle “Entertaining.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune “His best mystery novel.”—Time