What do You think about Paula Spencer (2006)?
I adore The Woman Who Walked Into Doors deeply, but I really can’t read it too often, it’s almost painfully personal. To me, it’s almost like reading someone’s diary. It’s very bleak, and it’s not exactly a feel-good book, although it’s not entirely hopeless.This books picks back up with Paula 12 (or 15, I can’t exactly recall) years later, after she’s rid of her abusive husband – I’m not giving anything away, you learn that in the first few pages of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. She’s been on and off the wagon, she’s trying to repair some relationships with her children, she’s holding down a job, struggling day to day just to live like a “normal” person, i.e., someone who doesn’t have to have alcohol to function, and, in some cases, still suffering the backlash of some of her alcoholic behaviour. The reason I like Paula so much, I think, is that she’s one of the strongest characters I’ve ever read. She’s very real (as are all almost all of Roddy Doyle’s characters), what she goes through is put very plainly, with no attempt to wring pity from the reader, and that makes it hit all the harder. This book isn’t nearly as stark as the first, and there’s not the claustrophobic feel that the first one had, probably largely because her husband isn’t actually present in the sequel. There are, however, other, still obstacles she’s got to overcome before she can come close to having a “normal” life, and there are burned bridges in her life that will never be repaired, but you never get the feeling that she’s going to just lay down and die.
—Miss_otis
Having just finished Paula Spencer, it's only natural to compare it back to The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. While I think the earlier book is superior in terms of its artistry--perhaps simply because the second book is more of the same--I enjoyed reading this one more. The tension in the first book comes from an obvious place: Paula's struggle with her alcoholism and her abusive marriage. In this book, Doyle gives us a newly sober Paula fifteen years later and sets up a different tension. Now, instead of hoping against hope that she somehow pulls herself out of her dead-end life, we get to root for Paula as she tries to get through each day and each moment without falling back into drink.Once again, Doyle blew me away with how authentically he creates Paula's voice. I'll go out on a limb and say that I've never come across another male writer who constructed a female identity as well as Doyle has with Paula. We get to see her anxieties as a mother, as a sister, and as a single woman; we also get to see how every once of these was and is still affected by her alcoholism. Because the entire narration comes from inside Paula's head, all of her fears and insecurities are laid bare. The fact that Doyle makes her so vulnerable to us is the biggest reason that she is so easy to connect to as a character. This is especially important because the book has no real running narrative; Paula is the story.Ultimately, I liked The Woman Who Walked Into Doors more as a book, but it was in this book that I really came to love Paula herself. If you've got an inclination to read one, you really should read them both.
—Colin O'Grady
Shameful that it took me so long to read this book. I don't know how Doyle does it, but he consistently handles difficult topics with such humor and precision and brevity and grace. Paula's struggle to "recover" from alcoholism not only involves staying away from it despite a crazy strong urge to get it, it also includes her determination to educate herself and to face her fear of her own ignorance. Doyle unflinchingly presents scenes in which Paula dives under her daughter's bed (and she's in currently in it), where she is sure she will find some old booze to get a fix. With courage and honesty, Paula faces the broken relationship she has with each of her four children, and smartly and briefly expresses how she feels and what she's trying to accomplish, then lets them come to her. She is constantly amazed at her kids' knowledge of geography and their internet savvy ways, which is testament to her own past dismissal of curiosity, and her pride in her children, as she knows they didn't pick up what they know from her.This passage comes toward the end of the book, which means we will leave Paula to her everlasting struggle, and things won't be tidy for her:"The smell, the stale drink--the dead air is around her. She'd climb in. She'd lick every broken piece and bleed happily to death. Especially the green glass. She'd bleed green and lie down." (at the recycle center)However, there are such wonderful, small rays of hope (and it's dead-on right that they'd be small--so real!) throughout the entire book, that you know Paula Spencer is going to be just fine.
—Amy
