Rating: 
Summary: 'Master piece'
Review: 'Master piece' - Those two small words sum up this contemporary classic perfectly. Doyle tells Paula's gritty tale, against the backdrop of the darker side of Dublin. Her sad, but somehow unsurprising story of a life sentence inflicted by her husband - Charlo, is a recognizable ordeal to people all over the globe. The battered cleaner tells her life story through the pen of Doyle. His immense skill is apparent - the interpretation of a woman's perspective, her emotions and interactions, are indistinguishably accurate. The shocking abuse sequences do not indulge in unnecessary heinous violence. The flow of the story follows Paula's train of thought, at times through rose tinted spectacles, but others in the cold, harsh, light of day. Doyle really has the knack of creating fiction so full of realism - like a mirror image. He knows 'people', he has the ability to make all of his characters so lifelike, you can almost touch them. The use of humour, horrific, sad and nostalgic material all add to the authentic quality of the book. A fantastic eye opener of a novel. It will grip you with almost as much force as Charlo. Read it. Love it. Hate it.
Rating: 
Summary: The woman
Review: 2. Roddy Doyle has proven himself once again. The character, Paula, was so very real and moving I was unable to put this book down. With such vivid images and powerful wording, The woman who walked into doors will go down as one of my favourite english books.
Rating: 
Summary: man bad;woman good
Review: as short as this book is i would have liked it better if it was a short story..maybe if you are an irish woman living in ireland it will open your eyes to domestic violence..i'm wrong;if you are a woman anywhere this is a book for you..GET HELP! the husband is a nasty dude..i couldn;t relate to this tale..the females in my bookclub,on the other hand felt it should be read by all women..children of abusive dads should also give it a read..i liked doyle's other books and give him high marks for fictionalizing a subject that is below the social radar..great book for reading about domestic abuse.bad book for the why and what to do..depresssing and repetitive..should have been a sunday mag feature..
Rating:
Summary: Love story or not?
Review: Best Book of the Year! Definitely the best read for me in 2000, and I am a daily reader. When I reached the end of this book, I started all over again and enjoyed this book as much the second time around. This is something I never have the time to do. There is definitely a love story being told amid the unraveling of the painful side of Paula Spencer's married life. Here is someone brutalized by almost 2 decades of marital tyranny and she can still retell the joys and growing pains of childhood. I want to give this book to everyone. It should definitely be required reading for medical and ER personnel.
Rating:
Summary: Memories Are Made of This
Review: Doyle's strength in 'Woman' is in showing the healing power of memories. Almost Freudian in its use of flashbacks particularly, the novel uses the mind of the wife-abused Paula Spencer as she uses her memories as medicine and bandages for her painful present. The reward is that Paula does survive in the end, but her hearing loss, her aching joints caused by broken bones, and her scars will always remind her that sometimes pain is just a person away. Whether Doyle can write in a woman's voice or not, his theme is genderless when he speaks to the power of the mind to heal the body and life itself. Having a cause for healing makes all the difference. Congratulations, Mr. Doyle.
Rating:
Summary: The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
Review: I absolutely loved this book and would highly recommended it to anyone. I find myself walking around quoting from the book key lines. "Ask me, Ask me". It was extraordinary how Mr. Doyle wrote the book from a female point of view.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing....
Review: I borrowed this book from my sister-in-law while visiting family in Ireland. I'd never read Roddy Doyle before, but I certainly will again. The book is terribly dark, and you find yourself feeling this doomed woman's every breath. This is not a book for readers who only like happy stories. This is, however, a painfully realistic view of poverty, alcoholism and violence. What I found most interesting was the way in which the narrator would repeat her thoughts over and over again, word for word. I liked that because it seemed so human...especially after a lifetime of being broken down. She would remember things as though it were for the first time, mainly because they are as vivid and painful still. I really connected with her, and any book that can do that is amazing. I strongly recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind the dark side of literature.
Rating:
Summary: Well Written, But Ultimately Disappointing
Review: I bought this book years ago... but didn't read it until recently. Overall, I was very impressed with Roddy Doyle's writing style - and definitely impressed by his ability to write from a woman's perspective. In fact, my only real complaint with this book is its utter lack of plot. I was expecting a story of a woman who, though battered, pulled herself together and how she did it. Instead, the book read: "I met Charlo, I married Charlo, Charlo hit me, I'm an alco." Great detail was given with respect to Paula's hiding of (and subsequent searches for) the key to the locked liquor shed, but this thread was not allowed to develop. Nicola is aware of her mother's drinking, but nothing is said, nothing is done, nothing is faced. If nothing was to come of Paula's repeated "alco" comments, I felt that Doyle shouldn't have bothered mentioning it. In short, there is no resolution. The story meanders from one tale of abuse to another until finally, "this is how I threw him out"... So, despite the excellence of the writing, this novel fails because it simply has no storyline, character development, or resolution. Does Paula just continue on in her miserable life, with nothing getting better?... WHY, exactly, did John Paul leave (Doyle could have had a wonderful subplot with that, but just lets it fade)? Additionally, I got a bit irritated with the fact that Doyle repeated ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS over and over. More than once I had the feeling that I had bought a defective book. I kept checking to make sure that I actually had turned the page (i.e. "someone is in pain..." - that entire paragraph is repeated verbatim on the following page), and although I realize that it was done for emphasis, I failed to understand just what point, exactly, Doyle was trying to underscore...
Rating: 
Summary: damnation with faint praise
Review: I had to skip over 20 or 30 pages of this book. Perhaps this is a testament to the power of Roddy Doyle's writing, but the violent dissolution of Charlo and Paula Spencer's marriage into a morass of alcoholism and abuse was too brutal for me to read. I did pick it back up toward the end, and read the last 25 pages or so, and while I found the ending strangely rewarding, I couldn't help but feel that it would have been doubly so if I had been able to stomach the entire book. In that way, the book became a little inaccessable for me.
Rating:
Summary: damnation with faint praise
Review: I had to skip over 20 or 30 pages of this book. Perhaps this is a testament to the power of Roddy Doyle's writing, but the violent dissolution of Charlo and Paula Spencer's marriage into a morass of alcoholism and abuse was too brutal for me to read. I did pick it back up toward the end, and read the last 25 pages or so, and while I found the ending strangely rewarding, I couldn't help but feel that it would have been doubly so if I had been able to stomach the entire book. In that way, the book became a little inaccessable for me.
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