The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle

When they reminisce over the past, they interrupt each other to quibble over details. Paula’s relationship with her siblings is complicated, but the way they bicker feels genuine. Slivers of warmth and humor keep the book from collapsing beneath its own depressing weight. Doyle’s style of repetition and circling back works better for the bigger moments of the story and over-emphasizing too many tiny moments throws off the balance. This section is initially strong, but it rambles. The only time the writing falters is when describing her adolescence. The next chapter flashes back to when Paula met Charlo, her ex-husband, and the story moves backwards and forwards through time to narrate Paula’s childhood, how she fell in lust/love with Charlo, and his abuse during their marriage. He’s plainly there to deliver bad news, but the reader doesn’t immediately learn the cause. The book begins with Paula Spencer, a 39-year-old alcoholic, letting a Guard into her home. It has a unique cadence, so an actor with a good voice could turn the audiobook into genuine art. Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked into Doors isn’t the cheeriest book, but it’s well-written so I recommend it anyway. I mistook it for something whimsical or slightly fantastic, but the first chapter reminded me that walking into doors is a euphemism for domestic violence. It received its world premiere in November 2001 at deSingel in Antwerp, and toured extensively before being played in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre in October 2003.I misread this title. The novel was adapted as an opera by the composer Kris Defoort and the director Guy Cassiers. The Spencer family first appeared in the RTÉ/BBC TV miniseries Family in 1994. Doyle's entirely unsentimental and perfectly attuned comprehension of the real world of the Irish present.' Robert Christgau wrote that Doyle 'has the decency to understand that the most constrained human life is never simple, and the grace and guts to prove how unimpoverished the countless meanings of that truth can be.' Adaptations

The gathering drama is linked to the increasing awareness of moving towards a climax, which is on the one hand the outbreak of violence in her marriage, and on the other hand the violent death of her husband. The narrative blends her recounting of the circumstances of her childhood, courtship and wedding day, with reflections on those events. The title comes from an incident where Paula's husband asks her how she received a bruise he was responsible for, and she replies that she 'walked into a door.'Ī sequel, Paula Spencer, was published in 2006.

The novel tells the struggle and survival of Paula Spencer, an abused wife who is the narrator. It was adapted from the 1994 RTÉ/BBC miniseries Family. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996) is a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle