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The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
  • Published: 4 April 1997
  • ISBN: 9780749395995
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $29.99

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sept 2010
Paperback
4 Apr 1997
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From the Booker Prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments comes the story of Paula Spencer: an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after reading.

From the Booker Prize winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments: the story of an ordinary woman whose extraordinary character will stay with you long after reading.

‘He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It’s as simple as that’

Paula Spencer is thirty-nine, the mother of four and learning to live without Charlo, her violent, abusive husband.

Paula’s started drinking more and dreaming more, taking herself back to her contented childhood and audacious teenage years. Everything was better then, not least the music, the soundtrack to her romance with Charlo. As the past floats by and mingles with the present Paula Spencer finds herself coming alive, in all her vulnerability and her strength.

‘Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood’ The Times
  • Published: 4 April 1997
  • ISBN: 9780749395995
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of twelve acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van and Smile, two collections of short stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

portrait photo of Roddy Doyle

Also by Roddy Doyle

Life Without Children
The Deportees
Love
Charlie Savage
Two for the Road
The Women Behind the Door
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
See all

Praise for The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

In feeling the pulse of a raw Dublin suburb, Doyle is recording a beat that can be recognised all over the world

The Times

This new novel is Roddy Doyle's best to date. I cannot recall any writer who has better captured the vulnerability and courage of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage

Cork Examiner

Even more mesmerizing than his prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

Daily Mail

His best work yet

The Times

Impassioned, dignified and richly humane

Independent

It is the triumph of this novel that Doyle - entirely without condescension - shows the inner life of this battered housewife to be the same stuff as that of the heroes of the great novels of Europe

Mary Gordon, New York Times Book Review

Compulsively readable

Financial Times

Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood

The Times

Paula Spencer may be Doyle's most successful literary creation yet, a tour de force of literary ventriloquism that gives the lie to the old writing workshop canard that a man can't write from the point of view of a woman, let alone in her voice

Washington Post