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The Women Behind the Door

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The Women Behind the Door

By: Roddy Doyle
Narrated by: Ger Ryan
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Booker-Prize winner Roddy Doyle’s spectacular return to his iconic character, 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, 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 undisputed laureate of ordinary lives'
SUNDAY TIMES

'The best novelist of his generation'
NICK HORNBY, author of High Fidelity

©2024 Roddy Doyle (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Inspiring Funny

Critic reviews

The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives
The women in Roddy Doyle’s The Women Behind the Door are…such wonderful company: so funny, so direct, so emotional, so surprising
An emotional and moving portrayal of life shaped by past trauma and domestic violence. Doyle’s ability to capture the subtleties of human emotions and relationships is great. His dialogue is spot-on, it’s funny and moving... I loved it (Elaine Feeney)
Paula Spencer [is Doyle’s] endlessly resilient, thoughtful and entirely fictional protagonist… [The Women Behind the Door] is possibly Doyle’s most mature, and certainly his most structurally sophisticated [book]
Genuinely devastating... [Paula is] one of Doyle's most gratifyingly human characters yet. She is full to brim of fierce love... Roddy Doyle is the undisputed master of dialogue. The exchanges between his female characters are a delight, packed tight with authenticity and a humour they wear lightly
Lesser novelists would ‘humanise’ Paula with virtue and much curiosity. But the protagonist Doyle gives us is as proud, inane and flawed as she is compassionate, witty and dignified
I don't often cry at books – music is a different matter – but Roddy Doyle did a number on me with The Women Behind the Door this year. He had just made me laugh when suddenly there was a line...that made me well up (John Self)
The Booker-winning author brings his storytelling genius to a tale about a family in crisis
This is an incredibly affecting third act that brilliantly captures Paula's internal weather, a light-and-shade of devastation and normality... The past will never be past for Paula, but as the reckonings come, it is beginning to be accommodated at last.
Roddy Doyle’s new novel might be the best thing he has written… it’s full of energy and life, it completes a trilogy to read and reread, and it shows us finally, joyously, how, whatever life throws at Paula Spencer, “she’ll manage. She always has.”
All stars
Most relevant
Loved it! I couldn’t stop listening. Such fluent and interesting storytelling, the reader was superb. I want more.

Comforting and entertaining

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First of all I got a bit bored with all the swearing and fast forwarded - landing on Nicola ‘s crisis when she went to her mum Paula’s for reluctant sanctuary . I found that exchange in real time quite fascinating in its familiarity of how family members relate to each other - with all their baggage fully intact .

The minutia of daily life as well as a crisis

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I understand all the present and past pain that both the women suffered. Paula from the guilt of being an addict and how it affected her family and her abuse at the hands of charlo. And Nichola's memories of her mother's addiction and abuse and how she herself was impacted by it. But I still didn't get a lot of the conversation between them. And I didn't understand why nichola wanted to leave her family and move in with her mother. Roddy does a great job of understanding women and writing the parts for the women, their feelings and their emotions. But as I say I didn't get some of their conversations. Also too much detail of their actions... she lifted the cup, she put the cup back down, she lifted the cup again, she put it back down!..... this book wasn't for me I'm afraid.

The narration

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Roddy I have been a fan of your books. Why write such a pathetic book.

What a disappointment terrible book

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Impossible to relate to. Too fragmented. I don't understand what the fuss is about. Sorry I wasted a credit.

Stream of consciousness. No real story

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