The Women Behind the Door Audiobook By Roddy Doyle cover art

The Women Behind the Door

A Novel

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The Women Behind the Door

By: Roddy Doyle
Narrated by: Ger Ryan
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About this listen

“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 listeners 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 listeners will be glad to have Paula in their life now.

©2024 Roddy Doyle (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Psychological Women's Fiction Emotionally Gripping
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Critic reviews

A most-anticipated book of Fall 2024 from LitHub | PEOPLE | Los Angeles Review

“The women in Roddy Doyle’s The Women Behind the Door are so flawed. . .[a]nd they are such wonderful company: so funny, so direct, so emotional, so surprising.”The Washington Post

“A showdown between mother and daughter that is about as emotionally painful as it gets. . . unflinching and dark, brutal in its economy, wry and mostly devastating.”—Fiona Maazel, The New York Times

“[The Women Behind the Door is a] miracle of a novel. . .with Paula, Doyle has created a fictional character as memorable as Molly Bloom or the Wife of Bath.”Associated Press

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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.

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