The Women Behind the Door

A Novel

By: Roddy Doyle

Narrated by: Ger Ryan

“A showdown between mother and daughter that is about as emotionally painful as it gets.” —Fiona Maazel, The New York Times

A powerful, moving mother-daughter story filled with struggle and redemption by Booker-Prize winning author Roddy Doyle

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer—mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor—has finally started to live her life. She has a job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, her boyfriend Joe is a text away when she needs him, and her four children now have the healthy families and petty dramas that Paula could have only hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.

That is until her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day. Nicola is everything Paula wasn’t—independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, a “success”—but now she is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. She has left her family and come to stay. As Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter must untangle past memory, trauma, and revelations to confront what they mean to each other—and who they want to be.

A timely and powerful novel of regrets, reparations, and reconciliations, The Women Behind the Door is a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families. Many readers will welcome the chance to reconnect with this strong, singular character whom we have seen in The Woman Who Walked into Doors and Paula Spencer, but all readers will be glad to have Paula in their life now.

Tedious; should have been a short story

This book isn’t long but it sure felt that way! The narrator is a victim of domestic violence and a recovering alcoholic . She has endless conversations with her oldest daughter whom she resents/is proud of/loves. These conversations consist mostly of the words “grand, hon,coffee, and tea”.It feels like Doyle was only given permission to use a small number of words. There are a number of peripheral characters that aren’t well-formed and the whole thing drags on endlessly. The reader gets the point of the generational trauma but it’s almost trauma to get through it.

The cruel profundity and beautiful sweetnessof primary relationships

The characters are deeply complex and real. The plot is rich.
The reader brings out the comedy, tragedy snd deep humanity of the story. Beautiful, well worth the time listening.

Beautifully told portrait of a woman.

The first book in this series is one of my favorites of all time. Doyle has a mesmerizing and precise way of describing an internal life. This is a portrait of a woman who has a difficult past and the role of that past in her present life, and I loved it. Quiet, not a rollicking plot, but beautiful to listen to. The books have been released with so many years between them they feel like stand alone but it did help to have some background from at least the first book to read this one. Roddy Doyle is nearly always an auto-buy for me. No matter the topic the writing will be incredible.