At sixty-six, Paula Spencer \u2013 mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor \u2013 is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man \u2013 Joe \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
That is until Paula\u2019s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep. Independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, \u201ca success\u201d \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
The next sequence in the life of Roddy Doyle\u2019s quietly remarkable, ever-memorable Paula Spencer, The Women Behind the Door<\/strong> is a delicately devastating portrait of shame and the inescapable shadow it casts over families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At sixty-six, Paula Spencer \u2013 mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor \u2013 is finally living her life. A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man \u2013 Joe \u2013 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.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":72907,"template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[4000],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-69800","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-fiction","8":"first","9":"onbackorder","10":"taxable","11":"shipping-taxable","12":"purchasable","13":"product-type-simple"},"yoast_head":"\n