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A Novel
by Roddy Doyle
A powerful, moving mother-daughter story filled with struggle and redemption by Booker-Prize winning author Roddy Doyle.
At sixty-six, Paula Spencer—mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor—has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, her boyfriend Joe is a text away when she needs him, and her four children now have the healthy families and petty dramas that Paula could have only hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.
That is until her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day. Nicola is everything Paula wasn't—independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, a "success"—but now she is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. She has left her family and come to stay. As Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter must untangle past memory, trauma, and revelations to confront what they mean to each other—and who they want to be.
A timely and powerful novel of regrets, reparations, and reconciliations, The Women Behind the Door is a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families. Many readers will welcome the chance to reconnect with this strong, singular character whom we have seen in The Woman Who Walked into Doors and Paula Spencer, but all readers will be glad to have Paula in their life now.
"An emotionally raw mother-daughter drama... Doyle's compassionate chronicle of recovery and reconciliation is worth seeking out." —Publishers Weekly
"[Doyle] excels in the singing speech of ordinary people that reveal the seething emotions underneath...A gripping, blisteringly honest examination of issues too long swept under the rug." —Kirkus Reviews
"I've been reading Roddy Doyle's since The Commitments, and I can't imagine ever stopping. He is a brilliant, one-of-a-kind writer—passionate, funny and humane." —David Nicholls, author of One Day
"With The Woman Who Walked Into Doors Roddy Doyle understood what we call 'coercive control' before society gave it a name. You might think that achievement enough, but he also gave us the wounded, yearning, beautiful heart of Paula Spencer. The character is a hymn to female generosity; the ordinary, discardable kind that keeps the world turning. Reading her voice for the first time sent a pang of recognition through me, followed by love." —Anne Enright, author of Booker Prize-winner The Gathering
This information about The Women Behind the Door was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Mark Nixon
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of ten acclaimed novels, including The Commitments, The Van (a finalist for the Booker Prize), Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (winner of the Booker Prize), The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, A Star Called Henry, The Guts and most recently, Love. Doyle has also written several collections of stories, as well as Two Pints, Two More Pints and Two for the Road, and several works for children and young adults including the Rover novels. He lives in Dublin.
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