This is not a book to pick up casually — if you’re feeling fragile this might not be a book to pick up at all — but if you do, then it is one that you won’t put down. There is something inexorable about the progress of a story that has no chapters and barely a pause, but if one can end up feeling like a python that’s started a meal and has no choice but to finish it, then it’s well worth the discomfort.

The drive of the story is entirely in the character of its eponymous heroine, Paula Spencer, and the tightrope walk of the alcoholic who has renounced drink. Familiar to readers of The Woman who Walked into Doors, Paula is on the eve of her 48th birthday. She hasn’t touched a drop in four months and five days. She has four children — successful Nicola, ex-drug-addict John Paul and, living with her, alcoholic Leanne and schoolboy Jack. All of them have been either abused, self-abused, neglected or all three. Her husband is dead. Her sisters patronise her. She works as a cleaner of offices and houses. She is constantly tired, in pain, worried and short of money. And most of the time she wants a drink.

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