THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605290599
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PIERCE TYLER
LENGTH: 61 lines
THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS
RODDY DOYLE
Viking. 226 pp. $22.95.
Paula Spencer is a woman who walks into doors - at least, that's what she tells people.
The truth is her husband Charlo beats her up. He slaps her, punches her, breaks her fingers. He even causes the miscarriage of their child.
Paula endures the marriage with alcohol and a silent stoicism. Like so many victims of spousal abuse, she feels powerless to seek help from outside sources.
Does this sound like the story line of the latest novel by Ireland's funny man, Roddy Doyle? Well, believe it or not, it is.
If you're looking for laughter, you won't find a moment of it here. The author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments has written an extremely dreary tale.
What's more, he's done so from the woman's point of view. Paula Spencer, a 39-year-old Irish cleaning lady, narrates The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, which takes place one year after Charlo is killed during a botched robbery.
Doyle does a persuasive, credible job of writing from the female perspective. The novel is an extended monologue.
Still, such an approach invites distraction. You can't help but look for those passages in which the author hasn't quite measured up.
And such passages can be found. At times the prose takes on a dishonest, tinny feel - as if Doyle has lifted the words from a psychiatric case study, or worse, from a segment of ``The Jenny Jones Show.''
Consider the antiseptic quality of the following lines:
``He demolished me. He destroyed me. And I never stopped loving him. I adored him when he stopped. I was so grateful, so grateful, I'd have done anything for him. I loved him. And he loved me.''
Certainly the plight of abused wives needs to be exposed and addressed in fiction. But Roddy Doyle - until now an extremely humorous writer - appears not to be the best spokesman.
You might suspect, as I do, that Doyle has simply chosen a trendy, politically correct topic and churned out a manuscript on it. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is a fine experiment, but the result is far from satisfying.
Interestingly, Doyle promised readers upon publication of Paddy Clarke, which won the 1993 Booker Prize and sold very well in the United States, that he was finished writing books whose titles began with ``the.''
The young Irishman's output before Paddy Clarke had included The Van, The Snapper and The Commitments. The latter two were made into movies.
Doyle was bragging a bit. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha was then, and remains now, one of the most unusual-sounding titles to have been released in some time.
So what to make of the unmistakable ``the'' in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors? Was Doyle lying before or does this contradiction reveal a disingenuousness inherent in the new novel?
I for one hope that Doyle will return to the sidesplitting, irreverent attitude that has made him one of Britain's rising literary stars. With or without the ``the.'' MEMO: Pierce Tyler teaches composition and literature at Old Dominion
University. He lives in Newport News. by CNB