2007, Scholastic

When we first met Paula Spencer – in The Woman Who Walked into Doors – she was thirty-nine, recently widowed, an alcoholic struggling to hold her family together. Paula Spencer begins on the eve of Paula’s forty-eighth birthday. She hasn’t had a drink for four months and five days. Her youngest children, Jack and Leanne, are still living with her. They’re grand kids, but she worries about Leanne. Paula still works as a cleaner, but all the others doing the job now seem to come from Eastern Europe, and the checkout girls in the supermarket are Nigerian. You can get a cappuccino in the cafe, and her sister Carmel is thinking of buying a holiday home in Bulgaria. Paula’s got four grandchildren now; two of them are called Marcus and Sapphire. Reviewing The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Mary Gordon wrote: ‘It is the triumph of this novel that Mr Doyle – entirely without condescension – shows the inner life of this battered house-cleaner to be the same stuff as that of the heroes of the great novels of Europe.’ Her words hold true for this novel. Paula Spencer is brave, tenacious and very funny. The novel that bears her name is another triumph for Roddy Doyle.

ed Oona Frawley, 2005, New Island

ed David Marcus, 2005, Faber and Faber

(The Ark 2005)
This is Roddy’s first play for children. It’s a fast-paced, action-packed comedy, with puppets and actors, for 6-11 year olds. With a sense of fun and imagination. Bertie, Benny, Nidgy, Nikee-Hah Uncle Rasher, Uncle Jimmy and Auntie Mona are no ordinary monkey family. – they live a happy double life – by day monkeys in Dublin Zoo, by night, at the cinema with snack boxes and brilliant chases by the Garda Síochána.

No longer employed at the biscuit factory, Mr Mack is becoming an inventor instead. Unfortunately, he’s also been arrested. There was a small misunderstanding at the bank involving a saw inconveniently shaped like a machine gun. And, just when he needs her most, Mrs Mack has disappeared off to become the first woman to circle the globe without telling anyone. So it’s up to Jimmy, Robbie, Kayla and Rover the jaded wonder-dog to rescue Mr Mack from prison, avoid some nasty orphan catchers and save the world from an army of ill-mannered slugs. Will they succeed? There’s only one way to find out…

It’s 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes hooch for the speakeasies of the Lower East Side. He catches the attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to leave, for another America…

Chicago is wild and new, and newest of all is the music, furious, wild, happy music played by a man with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.

Wonderful new writing for children 2003, Hutchinson

(Helix, 2003) Co-written with Joe O’Byrne

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is the story of Paula Spencer ­– from schoolgirl to battered wife and alcoholic – and her love for the dangerous, charismatic Charlo. Paula struggles on the edge of deprivation but never gives up, always washes off the blood, and knows she must continue for her children’s sake.

(2002) Dir. Kieron J Walsh

Brendan is out of touch. In school, his pupils ignore him and his fellow teachers give him a wide berth. His enthusiasm for old movies borders on obsession and even his love of music doesn’t help him to connect with the world. Then one night, over his lonely pint of Guinness, he meets Trudy. Beautiful, extrovert and fast-talking, she drags him out of his black-and-white dreams into a full colour world. But what Brendan could never guess is that it’s not just his heart she’s breaking and entering…