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'My name is Paula Spencer. I am thirty-nine years old. It was my birthday last week. I was married for eighteen years. My husband died last year. He was shot by the Guards. He left me a year before that. I threw him out. His name was Charles Spencer; everyone called him Charlo.'
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is one of Roddy Doyle's finest achievement to date, the heart-rending story of a woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after a violent, abusive marriage and a worsening drink problem.
Paula Spencer recalls her contented childhood, the audacity she learned as a teenager, the exhilaration of her romance with Charlo, and the marriage to him that left her powerless.
Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable. Lean, sexy, funny and poignant, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors shows, yet again, that Roddy Doyle has an unparalleled gift for transforming ordinary life into great literature.
About the Author
Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. His first novel, The Commitments, was published to great acclaim in 1987 and was made into a very successful film by Alan Parker. The Snapper was published in 1990 and has also been made into a film, directed by Stephen Frears. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, which won the Booker Prize in 1993, was the largest-selling winner in the history of the prize and has been published in nineteen languages. His latest novel is the sequel to The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, Paula Spencer.
Doyle followed the success of Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha, where he saw the world from the perspective of a 10-year-old boy, by placing himself in the position of a 39-year-old woman - and from the first page he is as convincing as he is original. The heroine is a Dublin cleaner, a woman trapped in a dead marriage, hopeless, battered by the man she loved for years, observed by her children in all her indignity - and yet throughout she is vital, funny, lovable, big as the lovely Molly Bloom in Ulysses, strong in her convictions - a fighter too, though not physically, she leaves her husband to use the fist, she has wit and pluck, and an eye for elegance. 'Walking into doors' is the euphemism Paula Spencer used to conceal the atrocities she suffered at the hand of this violent husband, Charlo. Since throwing him out of the family home, she has struggled with her alcoholism, bringing up four children with virtually no money, and uncomfortable memories that remind her of why she married him in the first place. Now she finds Charlo has been shot dead during a failed robbery; her whole life needs an explanation (where did the 1980s go? Why did she put up with the abuse?). The answers she finds 'mocked my marriage, my love; they mocked my whole life'. Paula tries to wrestle free from the guilt that places her at the centre of the issue; she remembers one visit to a hospital: 'I was there because of my husband's temper, because I'd provoked him, because I didn't deserve him'. Yet somehow, this is not a depressing tale. Roddy Doyle writes her in the first person, so the story is direct and sharp. He slips under her skin and stays there all the way to the end. From page one, you know the spirit that moves this woman beyond everything else is optimism: optimism in love, in the future, in her children - and you also know that this woman, despite her poverty and apparent insignificance, is a very great heroine indeed. The book fairly cracks along with Doyle's characteristic poignancy and brutality, and is one of those that is over far too soon. Doyle takes you right inside Paula and her appalling mess of a life, without once making her an object of pity. Brilliant. (Kirkus UK)
ISBN: 9780749395995
ISBN-10: 0749395990
Audience:
General
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 226
Published: 3rd January 1998
Dimensions (cm): 19.787 x 12.827
x 1.549
Weight (kg): 0.171
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