The Women Behind the Door
By Roddy Doyle
2024
First Published
3.49
Average Rating
269
Number of Pages
Part of Series
Booker-Prize winner Roddy Doyle’s spectacular return to his iconic character, Paula Spencer, whom he originated in the groundbreaking The Woman Who Walked into Doors and its follow-up, Paula Spencer'The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives'SUNDAY TIMES'The best novelist of his generation'NICK HORNBY, author of High FidelityAt sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, addict, 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, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, affluent, 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, mother and daughter find themselves untangling anecdotes, jokes, memory and revelation to confront the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.The next sequence in the life of Roddy Doyle’s quietly remarkable, ever-memorable Paula Spencer, The Women Behind the Door is a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families.
Avg Rating
3.49
Number of Ratings
982
5 STARS
18%
4 STARS
32%
3 STARS
34%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
4%
goodreads
Author
Roddy Doyle
Author · 38 books
Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993. Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from University College, Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.
