Woman Who Walked Into Doors

When I read that this was J.K. Rowlings favorite book I had to read it. This is quite the departure from the magical wonderland of the Harry Potter books. An in-your-face navel about abuse.

Paula Spencer remembers a happy childhood--or perhaps she just wants to remember it that way, since her sister Carmel tells a very different story. Similarly, she revises the story of her marriage to a violent abuser. Then she starts again--this time closer to the truth. Paula's willingness to take

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the blame for Charlo's actions and her reluctance to ask for help were frustrating to read. But I think Doyle intended, by relating over and over the episodes of abuse, to recreate the kind of frustration and the sense of being trapped that a woman dependent on an abusing spouse must feel. Not exactly a light read, but Doyle's style makes it worth the time.

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Paula Spencer, a working class woman in Dublin, learns at the outset of the novel that her husband, Charlo, has been shot dead by the police. The incident sends Paula spiraling backward and forward in her memories to visit and revisit and revisit again and again key moments in her life. The

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fascination of the story comes in watching her carefully reframed memories struggle with and ultimately succumb to the reality of her abusive husband. She moves from dewy recollections of their courtship and honeymoon to vague notions that something bad happened to her at some point to finally understanding that terrible things happened to her at Charlo's hands and feet and forehead and elbow and... but believes she deserved it all. The process of accepting her own self-worth and placing blame where it belongs, with ever more rapid-fire and graphic memories of accelerating abuse, make the final fifty pages a powerful, wrenching read as Paula tries to draw meaning and redemption from her past. Even the final scene, in which she makes the choice that costs her a son in return for saving a daughter and, truly, herself, must be replayed twice, as if she's not quite sure that the first version and her interpretation of it were correct. Significantly, the second telling is identical to the first, the final interpretation secure and unassailable.

Doyle captures the complex psyche of an abused woman and her tortured relationships with her parents, siblings, children, emergency room workers, and herself as she works to comprehend the truth of her life and separate it from the should-haves and what-ifs that dominated her adulthood.

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I didn't care for this book. It was depressing and morbid and I prefer that books written about women's abuse from the woman's view be written by women. I know there are many sensitive men out there. But only a women who has been abused (especially to the extent in this book) can express the

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emotions and grieving and personal backlash that is involved.

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Built as a detailed portrait and character study of a woman recovering from a difficult and abusive marriage, Doyle's novel is beautifully written, woven as it is from past and present to create a full illustration of suffering. But, in its effort to create a full picture, the novel also presents a

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character who is, for the most part, unsympathetic and unlikable. The details of her childhood and teenage years make her nearly impossible to like, and give the impression that the book's primary goal is a character study moreso than a complete story or exploration.

On the whole, I appreciated Doyle's style and writing, and I wanted desperately to be more touched by the work and the story...but I wasn't. More than anything, I wanted to know more and engage more with the children in the book, but they remain minor characters throughout the story, barely present as more than shadows but for their mother's abstract concern. There's no doubt that this is artful and smart...but that said, I don't think I'd feel any need to reread it or pass it on to others.

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This truely blew me away. This is a story told through the eyes of a female domestic abuse victim. What I couldn't get my head around was that it was written by a man. He got right into her mind, very detailed and thought provoking

I loved this one. It had what a really crave in a novel -- a strong believable voice. The narrator is working class Irish in love with a monstrous husband. The writing never falters, you always believe you're in her head.

Once in a while I like to kid myself that, with a little bit of effort, I could write just as well as the author of whatever book I happen to be reading at the time.

I would never make that mistake, or that presumption, with Roddy Doyle.

This is a great book.

i like how doyle takes everyday characters and makes them extraordinary. he's really gifted in his storytelling. and this is a prime example.

It's all been done before...
But, I do like the way he developed Paula's likeability, she grows on you.

another classic by the irish storyteller

Really, this is a magnificent book. It's got a whirling sort of evasive repetitiousness to it, a language and a tone and a manner of delivering itself, that seems to perfectly capture the mind and personality of a real woman-- a real abused housewife, someone who truly experienced all of this. I

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can't think of a better example of an author so inhabiting a character so different from himself in such a perfect way.

Disturbing, but definitely worthwhile. I read it in a single day. It's not a book with a strong through-plot-- it's a woman recalling her life. It's a peep into someone else's mind. It's quite tremendous.

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Roddy Doyle at his best in my view. No one does realistic dialogue better. And as an exploration -- perhaps a better words is indictment -- of Irish social mores, it's a biting critique. The story of a battered wife who descends into alcoholism, the book explores the tragedy of low self esteem and

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how it affects those around one just as much as it affects the sufferer. I felt every muscle in my body contract during the many tragic scenes in the book. I felt physical pain when Paula was victimized again and again. A surging powerful book that has a wonderful story and a real point.

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amazing. i still think about this book and the images the author created.

Wow, this is an emotion-packed little book. At a little over two hundred pages it still took a while to read. Don't let the rough language get to you, especially at the beginning. By the end, it won't be noticeable, you'll be bothered by more pressing matters. How on earth was a man able to tell a

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woman's story so amazingly well is just incredible to me. I want to read more of Doyle's work to see how he covers other subjects. But back to Paula...as we say in the South, Bless Her Heart (in a good way). While it would be too easy to give it away here, I think all women that read this will be asking why did she stay, why, why, why, grasping along the way why she did. A truly amazing read.

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Ouch. This book, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, hurt me. It really hurt me. The kind of hurt where I was lying in bed at night reading it and my partner walked in to kiss me hello after coming home from a 12-hour shift in a 1,000 degree kitchen and I just batted him away without looking away from

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the book because how could someone possibly interrupt a person when they were going through something so emotional, hello!

Thankfully he's used to living with a book nerd and he didn't take it personally. I wish I could say the same for this book - that I didn't take it personally - but I did. So personally.

The story follows an alcoholic woman who's a mess because she just found out her husband was shot and killed by the cops. Terrible, timely situation, though it was written some years ago and does not take place in America. Still, already grabbing at my heart strings.

And then . . . it gets more complicated. But not in the way you're thinking. In that the narrator is perhaps the most unreliable one I've ever read and as I kept reading, more and more lies were uncovered, her story shifted, we learned more things, we discovered the horrible abuse she'd suffered and blamed herself for. Nothing was as it seemed and everything changed time and time again. At first I was annoyed with this woman, then I begrudgingly felt some compassion for her and then, well, my heart really started to hurt. Such an emotional, raw story. I'm all bummed out thinking about it but am ultimately glad I read it. Good showing, Roddy.

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It's sad, nay tragic. It's funny. It's so very, very real. I adored it.

One of my favourite quotes: "He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It's as simple as that, and as stupid and complicated. It's terrible."

Wow.

painful details and all the right questions - brilliant

Audio finely read by Ger Murphy. Perhaps my high enjoyment is really of her reading. But it's a fine story tho abridged, ranging across childhood, motherhood, sex, love, petty gangsterism, alcoholism, with some dramatic moments. Chronology is jumbled but it still works - with a hint of Molly Bloom.

Immersive character study with a strong voice. Fairly depressing, but not desperate.

How is a self destroyed? Why? And how is it restored? That seems to be the question Doyle asks.

The confused pregnant 20 years old child Paula does not believe that Charlo´s first hit meant something - It is so outside what she would do, that she doesn't quite believe in it as a fact. Or if it is

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a fact - surely she must have provoked - he cannot act like that just because he can? Because it gives him a power-kick? What normal person can believe in violence out of the blue - from your lover, the father of your child - to be his most characteristic trait?

Superficially it is the story of the husband who maltreats his wife: Charlo hits, kicks, breaks and burns Paula for 17 years. But the book uses few only a few - and late - pages on describing the actual physical violence. The real theme is Paula´s slow awakening process - her way out of hell, how she thinks, verbalizes and thereby reflects herself to herself in a way no-one - few - her first teacher and her mother in glimpses - has done, as a capable responsible woman who can stand up for herself.

Roddy Doyle does not choose such a simple solution as to pinpoint Charlo as "The Evil Protagonist". Nor does he let Paula come across as a stupid, alcoholic woman who chooses to stay, taking punishment for 17 years. The door Paula walks into is not Charlo - Charlo is evil, but evil in the form of one person does not get power unless supported by many. Charlo stays for 17 years because he is only the last and most vicious mirror, the last in a long row of persons who brainwashes Paula to take responsibility for the malpractice she is treated by. The malign mirror of her as a punchbag has deep roots; None has mirrored her as a human being worthy respect: Her father calls her "slut" just for growing up. When her teacher stepped over physical boundaries, she once more learned that the one she depended on had (took) the right to defile. "There was nothing exciting about it , a grown-up man feeling me, feeling me while he was correcting my mistakes". Dad, teacher, brother and cousin all paved the way for Charlo: "Waters and his wandering thumb and Dillon with his wandering snot made me feel filthy; There was something about me that drew them to me: It was my tits that I was too young for; I´d no right to tem. It was my hair. It was my legs and my arms and my neck. There were things about me that were wrong and dirty. I thought it then; I felt it.... I was a dirty slut in some way that I didn't´t understand and couldn't´t control; I made men and boys do things." and "I wasn´t the only one. It happened to all of us. We went in children and we turned into animals".

So when Charlo takes the maltreatment to new heights, she hasn't any experience but the feeling that something is wrong with her to meet it with - for how can dad, brother, teacher and now husband all be wrong? Charlo´s malign reflection of Paula as a worthless nobody is supported by the best: "The doctor never looked at me. He studied parts of me but never looked me in the eye" - by anyone and everyone she meets -: "I could answer the door, I could get on the train. I could go to the shops. And no-one saw me.etc etc etc I could see all these people, but they could´t see me." And for no other reason than exercising the blind animal power of the non-thinking: "Laughing at me. The woman who walked into doors. They didn't´t wink at each other because they didn't´t have to". Non could see her for what she is - she only learns who she is the moment she becomes an onlooker: When Charlo turns his eye on her daughter, she finally recognizes the hate - "But it was sheer hate. It was clear in his face. He wanted to ruin her, to kill her. His own daughter." And then she acts. She does not become a malign mirror for her daughter - teaching her to take it - From dad ... brother ... by turning a blind eye.

It´s Doyle´s attack on a vicious system, kept up by the best. It is also a curious apology for the Church: "One thing for certain: I wouldn't´t have done it if I´d gone to the Holy Rosary.

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In the face of her abusive husband's violent death, 39-year-old Paula Spencer mentally processes her life, hoping to make some sense of it, trying to hold on to the illusion of normalcy she has fostered for nearly 20 years. Everything we see takes place in Paula's head; this is stream of

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consciousness on a very approachable level. As she moves back and forth through her teen years, her early married life and her present circumstances, her perception of reality is challenged, her memories boiling up so that the ones she prefers to suppress keep rising to the surface, confirming some of the reader's suspicions about what she may be hiding from herself, and yet surprising us too with some less obvious conclusions. It's only brilliant.

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This is the mesmerizing, powerful and vicious story of an alcoholic, abused housewife in Dublin. The depth of emotion in the story is impressive. The pace and dialogue were spot-on. I've known more than one battered woman, and the main character in this story captures the strength and the terror of

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that situation.

Very powerful novel, highly recommended, though it's not enjoyable due to its subject matter. It's not over-dramatized; it's simply in-your-face realism.

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This is a powerful book -- a character study of an alcoholic woman looking back on her life upon learning of the violent death of her husband, Charlo. She had kicked Charlo out a year earlier, after seventeen years of serious abuse. Paula tries to understand how Charlo could have hit her that first

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time, and why she believed, and continued to believe despite escalating violence, that everything would be all right. We see both Paula's strengths and weaknesses, her relationships with Charlo, her sisters and her children. Her voice is strong and this book is so well written. Life is seldom easy and everyone has a story -- Paula's will move you.

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