Join Roddy Doyle and Dave Eggers as they discuss Doyle’s newest novel, a powerful, moving mother-daughter story filled with struggle and redemption by the Booker Prize winner. A follow up to 1997’s standout The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, and the 2007 sequel, Paula Spencer, Doyle’s latest, The Women Behind the Door (2024), finds Paula Spencer — mother, grandmother, widow, addict, survivor at 66 — finally starting to live her life. That is until her eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep one day.

Nicola is everything Paula wasn’t — independent, affluent, a loving wife and mother, a “success” — but now she is suddenly determined to leave it all behind. As Nicola gradually confides in Paula the secret that unleashed this moment of crisis, mother and daughter must untangle past memory, trauma, and revelations to confront what they mean to each other — and who they want to be.

The Litquake discussion takes place on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

About The Participants

Roddy Doyle is the author of 11 novels, a collection of stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir of his parents. He has written five books for children and contributed to a variety of publications including The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Metro Eireann and several anthologies. He won the Booker Prize in 1993, for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

Roddy has written for the stage and his plays include Brownbread and Guess Who’s Coming For The Dinner. He co-adapted with Joe O’Byrne his novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and he co-wrote with Bisi Adigun a new version of The Playboy Of The Western World.

He also wrote the screenplays for The Snapper, The Van, Family, When Brendan Met Trudy, and co-wrote the screenplay for The Commitments. He lives and works in Dublin.

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them The Eyes And The Impossible, The Circle, The Monk Of Mokha, Heroes Of The Frontier, A Hologram For The King, and What Is The What. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and co-founder of 826 Valencia, a youth writing center that has inspired more than 70 similar organizations worldwide. Eggers is winner of the American Book Award, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the TED Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the 2024 John Newbery Medalist, for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature for The Eyes And The Impossible. Eggers is a member of the American Academy of Arts And Letters.