The Women Behind the Door

Booker-Prize winner Roddy Doyle makes a spectacular return to his iconic character, Paula Spencer, whom he introduced 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.

She has a job at the dry cleaners that she enjoys, a man—Joe—with whom she shares what she wants, and friends who see her for who she is. Paula also has four grown children, now with families and petty dramas of their own, 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 Women Behind the Door is a testament to the power of female resilience and the intricate bonds that both bind and liberate.

'The undisputed laureate of ordinary lives'

SUNDAY TIMES

'Brilliant...passionate, funny and humane'

DAVID NICHOLLS

'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