Continuing the psychologically acute and richly emotional story of Paula Spencer, Doyle's beautifully wrought novel finds mother and daughter untangling the ghosts of the past in order to forge a brighter future.
At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, survivor – is finally living her life.
A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.
That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” – Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind.
Over the next few days, as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, they find themselves embracing the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781529924138
Number of pages: 272
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mm
Weight: 194 g
Language: English
The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives - Sunday Times
The women in Roddy Doyle’s The Women Behind the Door are…such wonderful company: so funny, so direct, so emotional, so surprising - Washington Post
An emotional and moving portrayal of life shaped by past trauma and domestic violence. Doyle’s ability to capture the subtleties of human emotions and relationships is great. His dialogue is spot-on, it’s funny and moving... I loved it - Elaine Feeney
Paula Spencer [is Doyle’s] endlessly resilient, thoughtful and entirely fictional protagonist… [The Women Behind the Door] is possibly Doyle’s most mature, and certainly his most structurally sophisticated [book] - The Times
Genuinely devastating... [Paula is] one of Doyle's most gratifyingly human characters yet. She is full to brim of fierce love... Roddy Doyle is the undisputed master of dialogue. The exchanges between his female characters are a delight, packed tight with authenticity and a humour they wear lightly - Irish Independent
Lesser novelists would ‘humanise’ Paula with virtue and much curiosity. But the protagonist Doyle gives us is as proud, inane and flawed as she is compassionate, witty and dignified - Literary Review
I don't often cry at books – music is a different matter – but Roddy Doyle did a number on me with The Women Behind the Door this year. He had just made me laugh when suddenly there was a line...that made me well up - John Self, Irish Times
The Booker-winning author brings his storytelling genius to a tale about a family in crisis - iNews
This is an incredibly affecting third act that brilliantly captures Paula's internal weather, a light-and-shade of devastation and normality... The past will never be past for Paula, but as the reckonings come, it is beginning to be accommodated at last. - Daily Mail
Roddy Doyle’s new novel might be the best thing he has written… it’s full of energy and life, it completes a trilogy to read and reread, and it shows us finally, joyously, how, whatever life throws at Paula Spencer, “she’ll manage. She always has.” - Observer
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Yesteryear
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The Housemaid
The Correspondent
We All Live Here
Wild Dark Shore
Heart the Lover
Paula, the woman who walked into doors, is back. She's sixty-six now, sober, a grandmother, a survivor, though still battling her past too.
As always with Dolye the writing style is direct, conversational, the...
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Pre-approved to read and review the new Roddy Doyle novel, “The Women Behind the Door,” I ordered a previous book of his, “The Woman Who Walked Into Doors,” which also features Paula Spencer. As an alcoholic and... More
There are characters that are synonymous with their authors, and Paula Spencer is Roddy Doyle's Galatea, a woman who, by this third book, has lived many lives and is more than ready to relax into the person she... More
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