Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of 10 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.

FESTIVAL BOOK

The Women Behind the Door 

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.

At 66, 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 Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, and 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.

GET THE BOOK

Owl’s Nest Books | Calgary Public Library | Audio

BE CURIOUSER

• She’s been to hell and back. Now comes the reckoning. –The New York Times
• Roddy Doyle: The hate mail and death threats started in the spring of 1994. –The Irish Times
• Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle on domestic violence, writing from memory, and the lure of Irish culture. –CBC Writers and Company
• Roddy Doyle Reads “The Buggy”. –The New Yorker