A PORTRAIT OF an alcoholic family in a North London suburb during Britain's dingy mid-1970s does not, admittedly, sound like the most promising of concepts for a novel. But the wry, compassionate wit and deftness of characterization in Gerard Woodward's second novel quickly overwhelm any reservations the reader may have.

Woodward's first, August, followed the Jones family through the 1960s, and despite troubling undercurrents the novel was, in the main, joyous and life-affirming: like the decade itself, perhaps. But I'll Go to Bed at Noon takes us into the next decade, which was like one long, ten-year hangover of strikes,