The Woman Who Walked Into Doors

by Roddy Doyle

Book Overview

Doyle's 1993 Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha was hailed as a small, resonant masterpiece . . . heartbreakingly right (Entertainment Weekly). His latest book, his richest work yet, will astonish readers with its heartrending story of a woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and a worsening drinking problem.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670867756
• ISBN13: 9780670867752
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A remarkable achievement

Writing a story from the point of view of a battered woman is a bit like getting a head start in a race. Before you've even begun you've virtually got the entire audience already on your side, united and standing by this poor abused female. To do a mediocre job about a subject like this isn't terribly difficult purely based on the amount of emotional baggage that the reader is going to bring to the book. But to produce a story in such a fantastic and astonishing way as is done here is breathtaking. Roddy Doyle doesn't take the easy way out of anything. The story is shockingly real and the characters are vividly brought to life. The detail and the feelings are so intense that if one didn't know better, one would swear that this is genuinely the autobiographical story of a woman coming to the end of what she can take. There were passages in here that I was physically uncomfortable reading, purely from the power of the writing and the intensity of the raw emotion.The focus of Doyle's story is a fairly unremarkable housewife in contemporary Dublin who has the unexciting name of Paula Spencer. On the surface, Paula's not a terribly interesting person. She lives in an ordinary neighborhood, has a nostalgic regard for her childhood, and does the same normal things that thousands of other women her age do. You probably know her, or someone quite like her. As we learn more about Paula, as the layers get pulled back, we begin to see that there is more going on in her life than we initially suspected. And, yet, nothing that we learn, by itself, is especially shocking given the world that we live in today. Alcoholism, spousal abuse, and violence are unfortunately a part of life, so it's not the inclusion of those elements that lifts this book out of the ordinary. Where the book succeeds is in painting a shockingly realistic portrayal of a relatively unassuming wife who has gotten herself trapped in a violent and abusive relationship.We begin the book by seeing her the way she is seen by the people in her life who don't want to know what her real problems are. But the author doesn't let us stay on the surface for long. As we delve deeper and deeper into this woman's mind, the things we learn become more and more unsettling. Nothing is brought out merely for shock value, and nothing is brought out just for show. The reactions and attitudes of the woman are utterly and painfully real, while the actions themselves are explored in a deep and unsettling manner. They way that Paula tries to cope with her situation is disturbingly realistic, allowing Doyle to really get to the heart of matters. Paula's mindset is held up to the light for the audience to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. The book is a powerful character study.What keeps people in abusive and destructive relationships is something that is oftentimes a complete mystery to outsiders. THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS tells this story from deep in the point of view of the victim.

Brilliant

I'd seen the movies made from Doyle's earlier books (The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van), but hadn't read any until this. Despite the somewhat depressing tale it's great writing. The book is the recounting by a 39-year old Irish woman of her family and social life growing up, interspersed with her life now, a year after the death of her abusive husband. Told first-person, as if she is sitting at a kitchen table with the reader, the stories of her life are engrossing and entertaining. Although the actual battering doesn't come until the last third of the book, it lurks in the background of everything leading up to it. And when it does come, it dominates and is terrible in its harshness. It's a pretty impressive story, especially coming from the pen of a man.

Mesmerizing....

I borrowed this book from my sister-in-law while visiting family in Ireland. I'd never read Roddy Doyle before, but I certainly will again. The book is terribly dark, and you find yourself feeling this doomed woman's every breath. This is not a book for readers who only like happy stories. This is, however, a painfully realistic view of poverty, alcoholism and violence. What I found most interesting was the way in which the narrator would repeat her thoughts over and over again, word for word. I liked that because it seemed so human...especially after a lifetime of being broken down. She would remember things as though it were for the first time, mainly because they are as vivid and painful still. I really connected with her, and any book that can do that is amazing. I strongly recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind the dark side of literature.

Have fun with some real good literature!

THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS by Roddy Doyle is a book I had a hard time putting down because it pulled me intensively into the story .Doyle writes about an alcoholic woman whose husband abuses her constantly. Not only the story itself, but also the style and the composition of his book are extremely violent. Doyle for instance uses the language of the social area he describes. Some readers might be shocked by the rough, colloquial language his characters use, but they have to keep in mind that it helps to authenticate the setting. His frequent use of dialogue gives the reader a sense of being present in the environment describes. Also, there is no chronological development in the story. The book starts with the end of the actual story and ends in the middle of it. Past and present keep intermingling through the use of flashbacks. The way the story is told reminded me of how our own memory works: events and feelings are randomly thrown together, but to find out how something really happened you must sort everything out. To me, Doyle's highest achievement is the perspective from which the story is told. Doyle, as a man, tried to put himself into a woman's body and soul. I think he succeeded extremely well. Rarely did I, as a female reader, find stereotypical allusions of which I believe some men might be convinced. As can be seen in his earlier books(cf PADDY CLARK HA HA HA or THE SNAPPER), Doyle seems to have a real gift for slipping into characters that have nothing in common with himself. Readers who like to reflect on society will be all the more pleasedthat Doyle's central issue continues to be Irish working class. Some British readers might have seen his TV series FAMILY on BBC that was controversial, because it dealt with family taboos such as abuse, alcoholism, and poverty. Have fun with some real good literature!

A funny and heartbreaking book

I read part of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors maybe 18 months ago in the New Yorker. At the time all I thought was "Yeehaa! A new Roddy Doyle!" It's safe to say that I would read his shopping list and probably be enthralled. I thought it was an enormously well-written book in that the writing and writer were indetectable and all there was was Paula and her story. It's heartbreaking to read about this bright happy girl who one day discovers that she's "thick" after being put in the dumb-kid class at school. And from then on her life, and those of her friends, schoolmates and sisters revolve around men. The way men treat them, the way they are either a "slut" or a "tight bitch". The way they only become someone or make a name for themselves in relation to men. The worst part though is how much she did love Charlo before he began to beat her. It would have been more bearable if she'd just married the first thick that knocked her up. But that this man that she loved, and that genuinely loved her would destroy her like that was horrible. This book really affected me. I felt almost as though I'd lived it through it all myself. Very moving, very sad.