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: Remarkable
Review: I read it in a day. The theme is old, sometimes overdone, yet I found myself unable to part from Paula Spencer. The narrative style of Roddy Doyle tells this story in a circular and timeless fashion. The story doesn't begin, the story doesn't end. It happens every where and all the time, yet Paula feels that she is the only person to suffer her fate. She feels that she deserves it, that she has provoked it. She grasps at any sense of healing she can find. Yet she barely notices it in front of her own face, inside her family. Doyle's story telling techniques didn't let me down. He remarkably captures an extremely colloquial working class. He uses vocabulary to suit the less educated, the "thicks". He explains things perfectly as some one in Paula's position would. Doyle's couragous use of repetition was outstanding! He constantly re-uses scenes and slowly builds to an expanisive understanding of Paula's life. We being to realize things alongside Paula. And we understand that if one remembers the good-they must also remember the bad. Comparably-to remember the bad, we also take with us the good. With out hitting readers (or the main character) over the head, Doyle has explained to us why some people allow such terrible things to happen to themselves. He tells us, and he tells us again. He is teaching us to see. He wants us to "ask" those people, and offer them the help they want. He shows us that when all else fails--we have our family.
Rating: 
Summary: A funny and heartbreaking book
Review: I read part of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors maybe 18 months ago in the New Yorker. At the time all I thought was "Yeehaa! A new Roddy Doyle!" It's safe to say that I would read his shopping list and probably be enthralled. I thought it was an enormously well-written book in that the writing and writer were indetectable and all there was was Paula and her story. It's heartbreaking to read about this bright happy girl who one day discovers that she's "thick" after being put in the dumb-kid class at school. And from then on her life, and those of her friends, schoolmates and sisters revolve around men. The way men treat them, the way they are either a "slut" or a "tight bitch". The way they only become someone or make a name for themselves in relation to men. The worst part though is how much she did love Charlo before he began to beat her. It would have been more bearable if she'd just married the first thick that knocked her up. But that this man that she loved, and that genuinely loved her would destroy her like that was horrible. This book really affected me. I felt almost as though I'd lived it through it all myself. Very moving, very sad.
Rating:
Summary: I Read it for the purpose of Higher English
Review: I thought this book "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" was a very visual book. As you read this book you could actually visualise the violence going on and the pain Paula was experiencing. I don't read many books and this was the 1st Roddy Doyle book i had read and i can that i would read another of his books. I only gave this book a star rating of three because i feel that the book did not really have a proper ending, It doesn't tell you whaty happens to Paula after the death of Charlo. Does she get a better life? or stay miserable for the rest of her life? Did she meet another man? Does she manage to defeat her alcoholic problem? These questions were left in my head.......maybe that was his purpose, tho leave the answer to my imagination?!! Overall Doyle does convey the mental and physical effects of domestic abuse and the effect it has on a family.
Rating:
Summary: I Read it for the purpose of Higher English
Review: I thought this book "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" was a very visual book. As you read this book you could actually visualise the violence going on and the pain Paula was experiencing. I don't read many books and this was the 1st Roddy Doyle book i had read and i can that i would read another of his books. I only gave this book a star rating of three because i feel that the book did not really have a proper ending, It doesn't tell you whaty happens to Paula after the death of Charlo. Does she get a better life? or stay miserable for the rest of her life? Did she meet another man? Does she manage to defeat her alcoholic problem? These questions were left in my head.......maybe that was his purpose, tho leave the answer to my imagination?!! Overall Doyle does convey the mental and physical effects of domestic abuse and the effect it has on a family.
Rating:
Summary: A Powerful Book
Review: In 'The Woman Who Walked into Doors', Doyle tells the story of a battered wife. He explores the depths of Paula's mind, thoughts, feelings and memories. We see the effect of a cruel male-dominated working-class society on a young, ambitious but vulnerable girl. Through the novel Paula is cast as a victim of male abuse. A victim of her father, her younger brother, her husband and even strangers in the street ('...Jesus, if you went wrong once you were a slut. -Slut. My little brother. -Slut. My Father. -Slut. Everyone. They were all in on it.') Doyle successfully attempts to convince his readers of the realism of Paula's situation. Doyle manipulates narrative structure and language to create a real sense of intimacy with his protagonist Paula. He creates a mass of confusion, misunderstanding and sorrow. He deliberatly skips around Paula'a memories in order to mirror her confusion and desperation. He calls out for help for the repressed section of society that is chosen to be ignored by the rest. Paula is so deeply in love with Charlo that she is blinded to the truth, he is a monster. She is forced to realise and accept the situation. The end of the novel shows Paula, as she overcomes a violent marriage, a violent childhood, a repressed potential and an addiction to alcohol for the love of her children.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful Social Commentary
Review: In this book, Roddy Doyle creates a character who is just like anyone you'd meet on the street. Through her eyes, we the readers see hope, heartache, pain, and lost dreams as well as a look at greater social ills. This is an excellent book for bibliotherapy or anyone who enjoys a good story from a master storyteller.
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-oldmother of four, a recent widow, a survivor of seventeenyears 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.
Rating:
Summary: So good it hurts
Review: This is a book that reminds me of a joke, "We don't get Channel 4 round our way, we get our misery direct." Only our direct misery cannot have the wit and humour that this book has. Paula is full of strength, courage and wit in spite of everything. She is an every woman for the times that we live in. Charlo, although he could be any of a million men, is her downfall, her drug, and the man who drags her down and keeps her in her circle of despair. But like all drugs he is hard to give up, not until he dies, which comes in the first chapters so I'm not giving anything away there, is she free, but it's all too late. She is married to Charlo for nearly two decades; it is a time of alcohol, violence and crime. Despair seeps from ever page mixed up with nostalgia and thick black humour to ease the pain of the reader. The characters are so alive that this book hurts to read at times, Doyle's characterisations are near perfect.
Paula is a flawed character reflecting the life that she has led. Roddy Doyle makes it obvious from the start that there was never any escaping for Paula, from birth, from school, from adolescence she was always on the same path. You can leave the oppressive slum, but the oppressive, esteem robbing slum will never leave you. Paula is told what she is from birth and has no option but to believe it.
An excellently written book that pulls no punches and doesn't try to spare Paula her fate, but it's so sad that I prefer to pretend that it isn't happening, see, there's a lot of Paula in us all.
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