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

In feeling the pulse of a raw Dublin suburb, Doyle is recording a beat that can be recognised all over the world

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

Even more mesmerizing than his prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Impassioned, dignified and richly humane

His best work yet

Compulsively readable

Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood

Paula Spencer may be Doyle's most successful literary creation yet, a tour de force of literary ventriloquism that gives the lie to the old writing workshop canard that a man can't write from the point of view of a woman, let alone in her voice

A complex and intricate portrait of an unlikely, yet likable, heroine