"Paper cup" by Karen Campbell

An audio book. We follow Glasgow bag-lady Kelly, 50, for a few days - her PoV and the PoV of some of the people who help her - Dixie from the Outreach hostel, people who give her lifts, etc. She gets £40 of change and a ring from a bride-to-be on her hen-night, sees a fatal bus accident and saves someone's life, gets a lift to the coast and saves a maltreated dog, goes on a long walk (inspired by a leaflet she'd found about pilgrims), keeps thinking that she should return the ring - maybe it's real diamonds. She thinks her picture's in the media - is the dog-owner after her? Actually the press want to find her because she's the mystery life-saver. For a while we follow journalist Jennifer's PoV.

We learn about her life-style, her battle with alcohol, her gout, and her past (university). The people she meets have their own stories, and come out better after having met her.

We learn later of her suicide attempt, her time in prison - murder?! - living with Gary, attacking the women he cheats on her with.

She reaches her home-town, which is where the wedding will be, and returns the ring. She re-unites with her twin whose neck she broke (fighting or an accident) and stays with her.

The side-stories aren't interesting enough for me. I don't mind that most of their story-lines are abandoned.

Other reviews

• Claire Fuller (Paper Cup remains only just on the safe side of whimsy. Occasionally it strays into the realm of the inspirational quote. “If we all put something in the kindness bank, it’s an investment, isn’t it? Maybe it will be there when we need it,” says one of the characters Kelly meets. Some of these people are unconvincing, too straightforwardly good or bad ... Campbell gambles on our empathy when she shows Kelly at her worst, and she wins because she has written, without judgment or criticism, an original and memorable protagonist)
• Allan Massie (Scenes are too long, sometimes, it seems, simply because of the pleasure she has had in elaborating them, so they continue long after their point is clear. One expects description in a road trip novel, but description clogs the narrative. ... This is partly, indeed chiefly, because Campbell has elected to write it in the sadly fashionable present tense, excellent often for description, but not for narrative. The present tense tends to freeze the action and it tempts the novelist to dwell excessively on detail.)
• alecross71 (this novel is at its heart and soul a story about belonging and identity and second chances.)