The Hard Shoulder — Chris Petit

O'Grady comes home from jail to an Irish area of London weathering the harsh new climate of Mrs. Thatcher's Britain. Though this is a place he recognizes, he now feels lost in it. His estranged wife has moved on, and the daughter he barely knows is living with a wealthy record producer. Alcohol and the random chances it brings begin to define his life. People offer him schemes and fantasies, and he is expected to perform some action that will change lives. Undermining the conventions of the thriller, this book is an evocation of the gray avenues and pubs of Irish London as its most hopeless, semi-criminal milieu of the lost.