BOOKS: Roddy. Doyle's. Doldrums.
What. Is the effect. Of a book. Written. Like this? Reading through Paula Spencer, a novel with fragmented and laconic sentence structure, numbs the mind and causes a temporary disability to think in more than short, monotonous sentences. In other words, it could be the equivalent of receiving a minor head injury. Irish author Roddy Doyle has a repertoire of eight previous novels including Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, which won the Booker Prize in 1993, but this recent effort fails to live up to his lofty reputation.
Paula Spencer is the sequel to Doyle's 1996 novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors which stars the same heroine, Paula-although Doyle has switched the narrative vice of this novel to the third person from the first. In the previous book, the protagonist was driven to alcoholism by her abusive father and husband, and the novel culminated in Paula throwing her husband out using the conventional housewife's trusty frying pan. Fortunately you don't have to have read this previous work to understand and follow the sequel. In fact, not having read it is preferable; anyone with the expectations of a similarly fast moving and emotionally violent plot line will be sourly disappointed.
The novel trudges through a linear narrative from the protagonist's 48th to 49th birthday, as she struggles through mid-life as a recovering alcoholic. The first half of the book focusses on her unsatisfactory relationship with her grown-up children and the second half branches out to include a closer account of the dynamics between her and two of her sisters. Doyle takes the reader on a mundane bus journey through the trials and tribulations of Paula's day-to-day life, such as going shopping (a scene compellingly depicted on the book's cover), making soup and learning how to use the Internet. By the end of Paula Spencer the only thing keeping the reader from clinical depression is the euphoric realisation that this is thankfully not their life.
From an author known for his rib-tickling and insightful prose-fiction, the comedy in Paula Spencer is awkward and cringe-worthy. Perhaps we are supposed to see Paula as the recovering victim who, despite her harrowing circumstances, still manages to crack a joke. Unfortunately, nicknaming John Paul, her son, "Popey", qualifies as such. One mildly amusing moment stems from Paula's concerns with money mingled with her macabre preoccupation with death. After noticing that she has more than enough food in the fridge to last the week, she fantasizes about leaving some of it to her children in her will: "To my loving daughter, Leanne, I also leave a waffle."
Interwoven with references to contemporary national events, such as Kylie Minogue's breast cancer, the novel attempts to tackle important issues of cultural relevance. It tries to take on too much, however, commenting on a range of complex issues such as euthanasia, alcoholism, heroin addiction, infidelity and even murder, both in dialogue and plot using pithy and to-the-point diction. Unfortunately the terse style of the novel is not complex enough to handle any of these issues in sufficient depth and the effect is almost to trivialize them. Although the novel may speak volumes to other middle-aged recovering alcoholics, those who don't fit into this niche can only hope Paula Spencer avoids making any lasting impression that may tarnish the name of such a well-respected Irish author.
Paula Spencer
is now available in paperback. Doyle's latest, The Deportees, is now available in hardcover.
2008 Woodie Awards
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