The Women Behind the Door
Author: Doyle, Roddy
ISBN: 9781787334915
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE UK
Year first published: 10 Sep 2024
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback / softback
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
Booker-Prize winner Roddy Doyle's spectacular return to his iconic heroine, Paula Spencer
'The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives'
SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant...passionate, funny and humane'
DAVID NICHOLLS
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.
'Paula Spencer 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
ISBN: 9781787334915
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE UK
Year first published: 10 Sep 2024
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback / softback
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
Booker-Prize winner Roddy Doyle's spectacular return to his iconic heroine, Paula Spencer
'The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives'
SUNDAY TIMES
'Brilliant...passionate, funny and humane'
DAVID NICHOLLS
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.
'Paula Spencer 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
