Paula Spencer
James Hynes – The Washington Post : Reading Paula Spencer is pure, undiluted pleasure, and it's not necessary to have read the first novel to thoroughly enjoy this one. Paula is still a very funny woman (and her sharp-tongued sister Carmel is even funnier), and Doyle himself is still the master of the extended set-piece. There's a lunch scene with Paula and her two sisters that goes on for 20 pages, and I read it twice, just because it was such fun and so beautifully crafted.