Waterstones Liverpool Welcomes Roddy Doyle

Waterstones Liverpool are delighted to welcome Roddy Doyle back to the store as he joins us to discuss The Women Behind the Door - the next sequence in the life of his quietly remarkable, ever-memorable character Paula Spencer and a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families.

At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor – is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man – Joe – with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children, now with families and petty dramas the likes of which Paula could only have hoped for. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.

That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, “a success” – Nicola is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. Over the next few days, as Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter find themselves untangling anecdotes, jokes, memory and revelation to confront the bruised but beautiful symmetry of what each means to the other.
Roddy will be discussing his new novel alongside his canon of previous best-selling and much loved books (The Commitments, Paddy Clarke Hahaha and The Woman Who Walked Into Doors et al). Roddy will be in conversation with Deaglán Ó Donghaile, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University.

Host or Publisher Waterstones