Paradise by AL Kennedy

"Almost forty and with nothing to show for it, Hannah Luckraft is starting to notice that her lifestyle is not entirely sustainable: her subconscious is turning against her, her soul is a little unwell. Her family is wounded, her friends are odd, her body is not as reliable as it once was and her drinking is frankly out of hand. Robert, a dissolute dentist, appears to offer a love she can understand, but he may only be one more symptom of the problem she must cure. From the north-east of Scotland to Dublin, from London to Montreal, to Budapest and onwards, Hannah travels in search of the ultimate altered state: the one where she can be happy - her paradise"

Think I need to read it again, don't think I understood it but her language is so wonderful. About a girl / woman called Hannah from her first person perspective, she's an alcoholic and Kennedy describes a level of addiction I've never experienced but the reaching for Paradise is something that is so at the heart of me, I always feel hurt when I read Kennedy's writing becuase it accesses a part of me I without meaning to carefully keep supressed because if I didn't I would never stop crying and that is why Hannah drinks, life cuts her as deeply as me and she drinks to black the pain of the wonder out. Utterly brilliant bit about Jimmy Shand which she read out when I saw her a couple of years ago when Indelible Acts came out.