The Woman Who Walked into Doors

Rating:
Summary: A book that made me want to cry
Review: Paula is 39, an Irish widow with children, who sits at the table and recounts her life story. And what an ugly story it is. After an upbringing in a not very supportive family and an unsuccessful education, she meets and marries Charlo when she is still really a child. In the beginning Charlo is very charming, but you feel danger lurking in the background all the time. And then the beatings start, which rise in frequency and severity, but every time she finds a reason to forgive the man she still loves and (in her opinion) depends on. Until she sees him looking at their oldest daughter with this special, violent look...

It is book that made me want to cry for Paula when you could almost feel her bones breaking, cry out to Paula to DO something. When she finally takes her life into her own hands, a great feeling a relief washed over me. So a big compliment for Roddy Doyle.

Rating:
Summary: an eye opener
Review: Paula O'Leary, the narrator of this story, is an abused wife. But it wasn't always that way. She has fond memories of meeting and marrying Charlo Spencer, the man of her dreams. However, she also has memories of him beating her until he exhausted himself, raping her, waking her up with a boot to the stomach.

Paula lived with this man, trapped by her poverty, her lack of self worth, her despair and fear. She feels that Charlo is the only man or person who sees her when she feels invisible. She becomes an alcohlic.

It's only when Charlo stares at his daughter with hate filled eyes that Paula realises that she must stop him. She has to break the cycle in order to protect her children as best as she can.

Roddy Doyle has written a painful and graphically real story with an amazing lead character. I really felt for her when Charlo would escort her to the hospital after a beating and she would silently plead with the doctors or nurses to ask how the injury happened. Instead all they saw was a drunk who kept falling down stairs and walking into doors.

Rating:
Summary: This is real life.
Review: Roddy Doyle can create a world that is also reality, and that is a talent. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is perhaps the most realistic, and therefore moving, piece of work he has written thus far. He is the Mike Leigh of the literary world, enough said.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: 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 and most read books.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping.
Review: Roddy Doyle's book, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors was gripping. As Doyle shows the abuse cycle that occurs in a victim's life, the reader experiences all of the same emotions and experiences that the lead character, Paula Spencer, feels. Doyle gives incredible insight into a woman's mind and heart in his powerful book. He handles a delicate and controversial subject sensitively. Doyle does an excellent job of explaining the abuse cycle by showing how it works. Paula's father was an abusive man who beat and mentally scarred Paula's eldest sister. Paula's teachers and her younger brother sexually assaulted her and she subsequently married Charlo, an abusive man who degraded her, beat her until she couldn't walk, and raped her. "I closed my eyes. He kicked my back. Again. My back. My back. My back. The same spot again and again. He was breaking through my back." From the abuse from her husband Paula felt as though she was nothing and couldn't leave him because she and her children would die without his support. They were nothing. Paula then began abusing herself. She became an alcoholic to deal with her pain. In the end, she beat her husband and kicked him out. Doyle shows the reader everything that happens to Paula during her life. The book is more than an abuse story; it is a life story. The reader feels what Paula goes through. You feel her pain, her terror, and her sadness when she sees that no one cares what happens to her. Doyle makes the reader care about Paula and what happens to her. We share every moment and every feeling. Doyle captures Paula's vulnerability when she wanted to be saved but was too scared to say anything and when Paula shares that she lost a baby to Charlo's beatings. "The baby was gone before I knew if it was a boy or a girl. Between Leanne and Jack. Born too early; born by a fist. A girl. I never saw her. Her name is Sally." In Roddy Doyle created an excellent account of domestic abuse. The explanation he gave of abuse and the intimacy with his main character, Paula made for an emotional and moving read. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors was a well-written, gripping book that holds onto you until the last page.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing piece of writing , about a woman, by a man.
Review: Roddy Doyle's latest book is an amazing tetimony to the writer's craft and even more to the soul of this writer, so sensitive and receptive to both universal and female sentiments and concerns to be able to create a woman protagonist (a battered woman) and speak through her voice without our ever stopping to question the author's gender. I have never been battered nor been in close contact, knowingly, with any battered women but his book made me feel so involved with the main character's problems that I was shocked to the core. And the writing is brilliant. It's a must!

Rating:
Summary: A heartbreaking page-turner
Review: Roody Doyle has done it again. I throughly enjoyed Paddy Clarke and the Barrytown trilogy, but this book is perhaps the most profound of all of them, and the best example of his gritty style's brilliance. Paula Spencer is in some ways a tragic heroine, her fatal flaw being her love for her husband, Charlo. I have fortunately never had to walk in her shoes, but I feel I have lived her life and been able to learn from it. Few novels I have read have had that power. Paula is a rich character, and her story, in Doyle's sensetive hands, is unforgetable.

Rating:
Summary: Yet another diary, but with more depth...
Review: Simply put, this book broke my heart. Although it was slow to take off, I kept on because I had read great reviews for it on this site. The scattered narrative style is confusing yet effective. I wept near the end but was a bit disappointed at the abrubt conclusion that failed to resolve any real issues. In short, how a man could have written with such sensitivity about Paula's tragic situation is beyond me.

Rating:
Summary: A Fresh Look at Abuse
Review: The only reason that I read this book is because of J.K. Rowling. I read an article in Oprah magazine about J.K. Rowling and she stated that this was one of her all time favorite books. In fact, she said that Roddy Doyle was her favorite author. Had to read it. And it is good.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is the story of an abused dejected woman named Paula Spencer. Known as the most accident-prone patient at the emergency room, Paula recounts her life story from childhood to adulthood.

Paula was taken aback by Charlo. She said : I swooned the first time I saw Charlo. I actually did. I didn't faint or fall on the floor but my legs went rubbery on me and I giggled. I suddenly knew that I had lungs because they were empty and collapsing.

Her first dance with Charlo made her his. He had her all wrapped up and then some.

Throughout her marriage to Charlo, she lost herself and kept to herself. Each time she visited the hospital she told them she had fallen. No questions were asked. No further questions.

It is a heart wrenching story told in a woman's voice by the author -a man. What a superb job he does of delivering all emotions and thoughts that a despondent woman would have.

The journey of her life with Charlo, how she bounced back, how she coped, and how she now deals is vividly displayed. You won't want to put the book down. It was a great and easy read.

Roddy Doyle won the Booker Prize for Paddy Clarke ha ha ha. I
plan on reading that next. Check it out!

Rating:
Summary: The reflections of Paula Spencer.
Review: The reflections of Paula Spencer, a thirty-nine year-old mother of four, a recent widow, a survivor of seventeen years of spousal abuse, a reluctant alcoholic, a cleaning woman, and a powerful representation of a wee bit of hope emerging from absolute hopelessness. Her husband, Charlo, has been recently killed by the police after murdering a woman in a botched bank robbery attempt. Much of the pain portrayed in Paula's reflections comes in a tidal wave response to Charlo's final brutal attack. The reader is lead down a painful personal tour of Paula's desperate life. In January, 1996 Doyle introduced this marvelous work with a brief short story in the New Yorker called "Ask Me, Ask Me, Ask Me." Those words are what Paula Spencer hopes every doctor, any nurse, a friend, or even a relative will ask when her feeble excuses like "fell down the stairs" or "walked into a door" become too common or just too unbelievable as her injuries become frequent and more severe. I believed the essay failed in representing a woman's literary voice by a male author: the sentence structure too long, the paragraphs too logical, the complete work too linear. Once I leaped into the book, I was overwhelmed by Doyle's brilliant new style. This is a vivid portrayal of abused woman, and never failing in a continuity of a feminine literary style. Unlike Sharon in The Snapper, Doyle represses his innate masculinity and explores with such precision and dedication the character of Paula. In my previous reading of Paddy Clarke, I raved about the characterization of the turmoil of a young Dublin boy, a character with whom Roddy Doyle could easily associate. Obviously, the far more advanced Paula Spencer is more of a stretch, and his accomplishment of this character is a landmark that will catapult Roddy Doyle into the echelon of Irish literary genius. So as all naysayers may comment on the continued commercial success of another new movie based on the third of his Barrytown trilogy (based on The Van, scheduled to be released late 1996) and who wish to associate him more along the lines of the godawful Michael Crichton or Scott Turrow, I'll mock and laugh at every one of them as Doyle slowly continues to win the respect and admiration of the public, his peers, literary critics, and every last bleeding Irish literary academic scholar.