Famous Author Overcomes Skepticism

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A couple of days before I’m due to meet Roddy Doyle in Dublin, I test positive for Covid, which, although suboptimal, is at least in the spirit of his new book, The Women Behind the Door, the third in his series about Paula Spencer. The book opens with Paula putting on the kettle after enjoying “a great day” out with her pals in May 2021; a trip to the vaccination centre for the first jab of the pandemic, and a sense that, as Doyle puts it, we might be approaching “the beginning of the end”.

Doyle got his first shot at the same place, a repurposed conference centre on the Dublin City University campus in Glasnevin, on the same day. “Driving home, I began to wonder, is there a book here?” he tells me, as we chat, appropriately distanced, over Zoom. “I had been writing short stories, and I was thinking, Can I bring it further? Can I confidently say that we’re over a bit of a hump and we’re heading back to what would have been normality, or some version of normality, something new? So there and then I began to wonder, even before I got home, what would Paula be thinking?”

As we talk, it becomes increasingly clear why he turned to her, and not one of his other characters – the pub-going friends we meet in the “Two Pints” novels, for example, or any of the inhabitants of Barrytown, the setting for several of his best-known novels, including The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van. “Of all the characters I’ve written, Paula has always been lurking somewhere in the back of my mind,” he says. “I think because people mention her more than any other character, in a quiet way. The Snapper is a regular feature on Irish television, and people who weren’t born when it came out can quote it, and that’s a great source of joy for me. But actually, when it comes to people just wanting to say something quietly to me, it’s often about Paula Spencer and the two books and the television series Family. And I think of all the characters I’ve written about, despite the gender difference, she’s the one that’s probably closest to me somehow.”

Paula has multiple reasons to leave the past behind. She has survived Charlo, and confronted her alcoholism, brutal battles that she fought in 1996’s The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and, 10 years later, Paula Spencer. Her four children have grown up and left home. When we meet her now, she is cautiously celebrating her victories, reflecting on how they have prepared her for the challenges of the pandemic.

In the opening pages of the novel, she remembers: “It’s hard to imagine it now, the way life was before the lockdowns. But it did feel a bit familiar to Paula when it started. She’s always had to be careful. Since she gave up the drinking and stayed that way. She’s had to be careful about where she goes, how long she stays. Careful about her friends. Careful about her mood. Very careful with the money. It took her years to make this – living carefully – a source of pride.”

Having resolutely created her own safe space, Paula is a more or less contented empty nester, and The Women Behind the Door’s chief drama comes in the form of her daughter Nicola, who arrives without warning on her doorstep, in flight from the collapse of her own domestic life. The threat that she poses to Paula’s peace comes first in the shape of the wine that she brings – “It’s not even just Nicola. It’s Nicola with a gun”, says Doyle – and subsequently in the resurfacing of memories of her traumatic childhood. “I knew somehow, quite early on, it was going to be one big, long conversation, an excruciating conversation, between her and her daughter. A day of reckoning,” Doyle says. “She knows it’s payback time; she has to confront the fact that this woman in her 40s who has looked after Paula so long and so well now has to be looked after. And not only that, she has to confront any questions as to why she has to be looked after, why she’s there.”

Doyle is no stranger to reinvention. Before he became a full-time writer, he was a teacher at a community school, and although he loved it, and says he still misses “the numbers, the chat and the laughter”, he doesn’t regret changing his life. “I wouldn’t have been able to write The Woman Who Walked Into Doors if I’d been a teacher. It was the first novel I wrote after giving up teaching, and it was a full-time job. It wasn’t something like Paddy Clarke, when I grabbed at the minutes and the half-hours and the hours I had between teaching and changing nappies and putting babies to bed. But with The Woman Who Walked Into Doors? I couldn’t have written it in that way. I couldn’t keep dashing back and writing a sentence here or there. I had to concentrate on writing very little all day until it began to flow. That book was written by a full-time writer, as opposed to somebody who wrote in the gaps in between other parts of life.”

God in my life is Seán O’Casey: it was plays, the words on the page even more so than the words on the stage. Reading those plays had a huge, huge impact on me.

He remains optimistic. “There’s a tendency to think that we have so much to offer the world, but the world has nothing to offer us. It’s there. But on the other hand, back to the Olympics, I think one of the reasons why Rhasidat [Adeleke, the Irish sprinter] has become at her age some sort of national treasure, is because it gives people the opportunity to cheer for that note of Irishness and to elbow the strict Celtic twilight bullshit in the face.”

As we conclude our conversation, it is clear that Doyle is a man deeply rooted in Irish culture and literature. However, he is also well-aware of the complexities and contradictions of his country’s identity, particularly in relation to its treatment of those who are perceived as being ‘other’.

Conclusion
Roddy Doyle’s work continues to captivate readers around the world with its unique blend of humor, poignancy, and insight into the human experience. His latest novel, The Women Behind the Door, is no exception, offering a powerful exploration of trauma, survival, and the complexities of Irish identity. Whether he is writing about Paula Spencer or exploring the world of the Catholic Church, Doyle’s work continues to defy categorization and challenge his readers’ assumptions.

FAQs

• Can I still get The Women Behind the Door?
  • Yes, you can purchase The Women Behind the Door by Roddy Doyle from the Guardian bookshop.
• Will there be more from Paula Spencer?
  • Roddy Doyle hasn’t ruled out writing more about Paula Spencer, but as of now, there are no firm plans.
• What inspired Doyle’s latest novel?
  • The Women Behind the Door was inspired by the Irish experience of the pandemic and Doyle’s own struggles with Covid.
• What does Doyle think of the current state of Irish literature?
  • Doyle believes that Irish literature is flourishing, with a new generation of writers pushing boundaries and exploring complex themes.