Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle returns to his role as Paula Spencer in “The Women Behind the Door.”

At the end of Roddy Doyle's 1996 domestic violence novel The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Paula Spencer finally fights back after decades of physical abuse and kills her husband Charlo with a frying pan when she sees him looking at their daughter Nicola “that way.”

“It was my finest hour,” she said. She couldn't fight Charlo for herself, but she realized she could fight him for her child.

And now, 25 years later, COVID-19 and lockdown have hit Ireland, Charlo is long dead, and Paula is doing well. In The Women Behind the Door, the third book in Doyle's Paula Spencer trilogy (the middle novel is simply called Paula Spencer), she is in her mid-60s and hasn't had a drink in years.

She has worked as an office cleaner at night and works in a dry cleaner's during the day. Her four children are grown and out of the house, she has a friend named Mary and a casual boyfriend named Joe who laughs at her jokes.

She is particularly proud of Nicola, her eldest, the “goddess” and the successful person. “In her lowest moments, Paula can look at Nicola and think: It wasn't all a disaster.”

This is a sign that disaster is about to happen, and it is. The day Paula returns home from a wild outing with Mary, Nicola is standing catatonic on her doorstep. She has left her husband and children. She is moving back home.

What happened? Answering this question takes up the entire novel. The journey is full of fear, tempered by wisdom and humor.

The Women Behind the Door is a haunted novel – Charlo's voice is in Paula's head, even though he's been dead for decades. Alcohol is never far from her thoughts, even though she no longer drinks. The past swims through her brain: memories of beatings and drinking, crying children, money spent on vodka instead of food. And guilt. Oh, the guilt. The shame.