The Women Behind the Door

A Novel

By: Roddy Doyle

Narrated by: Ger Ryan

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 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 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.

©2024 Roddy Doyle (P)2024 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

Named a most-anticipated book by LitHub • People • Los Angeles Review of Books

“An emotionally raw mother-daughter drama. . . . Doyle’s compassionate chronicle of recovery and reconciliation is worth seeking out.”—Publishers Weekly

“Paula Spencer is back amid the pandemic lockdown in Roddy Doyle’s brilliant new novel. . . . It is no wonder that Doyle, whose other novels include the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments, has brought her back for another go-round. She is fabulous company. . . . With Paula, Doyle has created a fictional character as memorable as Molly Bloom or the Wife of Bath.”—AP News

“[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