Book Review: Paula Spencer is back amid the pandemic lockdown in Roddy Doyle’s brilliant new novel

Paula Spencer is back for an encore performance in Roddy Doyle’s latest miracle of a novel, “The Women Behind the Door.” In this installment, the 66-year-old mother, grandmother, recovering alcoholic and domestic violence survivor, has weathered the first year of the Covid lockdown in reasonably good sprits.

Her abusive husband, Charlo, is long dead, and her four adult children are finally out on their own. She has a sturdy support system in place, including best friend Mary, who got her a part-time gig at a dry cleaning shop that she enjoys, and longtime, lovably pedantic boyfriend Joe, who teaches her about high-minded things like opera, history and birds.

Then, on the very day in spring 2021 when she and Mary get their first jab at a Dublin theater, celebrating later with a bag of McDonald’s on a windswept beach outside town, her eldest, 40-something daughter shows up on her doorstep and asks if she can move back home.

Over the course of this mesmerizing, dialogue-driven narrative, Doyle will gradually reveal why Nicola — who Paula always considered the most reliable of her kids —walked out on her family, including nice-guy husband Tony and their three daughters. Especially when their youngest, Lily, was still in high school.

Initially, her dramatic departure doesn’t seem to make sense. But as the two women talk and Paula reflects on her past, it becomes clear how deeply alcoholism and abuse have scarred all the members of Paula’s family and so Nicola’s decision to walk away from hers — from any family at all — begins to seem entirely reasonable.

Doyle first introduced Paula in his 1996 novel “The Woman Who Walked into Doors.” The title alludes to an excuse that battered women sometimes give to explain their injuries. Ten years later, he wrote a follow-up, “Paula Spencer,” which found the widowed, working-class heroine newly sober, reckoning with the damage done to her children.

It is no wonder that Doyle, whose other novels include the Booker Prize-winning “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha” and “The Commitments,” has brought her back for another go-round. She is fabulous company, whether she is gossiping with Mary or marching through down-at-the-heels, pandemic-scarred Dublin, observing the Roma people gather at the base of the James Joyce statue on North Earl Street and getting clipped by an immigrant food delivery worker zipping by on his e-bike.

With Paula, Doyle has created a fictional character as memorable as Molly Bloom or the Wife of Bath.

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