The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
~Roddy Doyle (1996)

Paula Spencer is a thirty-nine-year-old Dublin woman who makes her living cleaning houses. The mother of four children, Paula is recently divorced - she kicked her abusive husband out of the house on a Thursday morning after knocking him over the head with a frying pan. She had taken the abuse herself for years, but it was the way he looked at their adolescent daughter on that particular morning, the way he regarded her young face with seething hatred, that propelled the long suffering Paula into action.

Written as a compelling first-person narrative, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is a contemporary portrait of a working class Irish woman. I found an awful lot to like in this story and in the anguished yet spirited voice of its narrator. It took me right into the heart of Paula Spencer, walked me through her childhood and adolescence, whisked me through her courtship with her husband, Charlo, whom she loved fearlessly for most of their marriage, and deposited me into the depths of her struggle with alcoholism. Roddy Doyle brilliantly sustains the voice of his female narrator. I came to know Paula Spencer in these 31 staccatoed chapters as one would know a sister or a best girlfriend. She's a real character - and I miss her now that my reading of this marvelous novel has concluded.

Roddy Doyle lives and writes in Dublin. His 1993 title, Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize.