WITHIN an Irish context, Roddy Doyle is not so a writer of fiction as a social phenomenon. To judge him as a novelist in traditional or modernist terms of refinements of technique, characterisation, plotting, exploration of theme, etc. would produce little of interest to those who concern themselves with, such things. Moreover, I suspect that Roddy Doyle himself would pay scant attention to what literary critics think about his work. He knows that his books are hugely popular and sell extremely well. He knows, too, that he has won the Booker Prize (to the envy, let's be honest, of many members of the Irish literary fraternity and sorority), that he has been lavishly lauded by the British literate, and that he has achieved celebrity status, at least here and in Britain. Both he and his bank manager are surely well pleased with how things have gone.
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is an outgrowth of Doyle's popular and controversial television drama, Family, which dealt with the life of a Dublin Northside working class family, the Spencers. That drama concluded with the abused wife Paula finally throwing out her brutal husband Charlo when she suspects him of taking a sexual interest in their teenage daughter Nicola. In this follow up novel, Paula takes up the story. The narrative strings together, in a series of vignettes, her life before Charlo, her life with Charlo and her life after Charlo. It opens with a visit from the police informing Paula that Charlo has been shot dead in a foiled bank robbery (Charlo was holding the bank manager's wife hostage). It ends with Paula courageously pondering a bleak future.
Doyle's commercially successful social realism, once more rerun in this latest work, raises some interesting questions for which, I hasten to say, I don't pretend to have the answers.
When Family was broadcast I wrote in the columns of this paper that Doyle deserved praise for confronting some of the seamier aspects of contemporary Irish urban life. I think that praise was deserved. I also recognised Doyle's knowledge of Dublin working class life. And I still think that Doyle knows his Dublin working class life. Yet now, in The Woman Who Walked into Doors, I find myself disturbed and dissatisfied with this portrait of Paula, a Dublin, middle aged, working class, alcoholic woman. Why is it, I wonder, that I find Doyle more acceptable on the box than in the book?
What, for instance, is the reader to make of a page long description of the teenage Paula "wanking" (not masturbating, she insists with nice discernment) a schoolmate during class? Do such horrid things happen in schools in Barrytown? Perhaps Shocking? To whom? That teenagers in general and of both genders masturbate, somewhere, to their relief and pleasure, is a commonplace to all. The "wanking" of one pupil by another during class is not a commonplace, unless I have been deaf and blind throughout my 30 years of school teaching. I don't say it couldn't happen. But in his choice of this material, Doyle has gone out of his way to shock, and to shock for ifs own sake. He hints, too, that in Paula's social milieu, such behaviour is an accepted form of sexual initiation rite for girls. Now, that's new to me and anyone else I've asked about it.
Or take Paula's recollection of Charlo's declaration of his love for her. After buying chips at the local fish `n' chipper, Charlo asks Paula to take off her knickers. Reluctantly and with some puzzlement, she does. Charlo then proceeds to put his chips in her knickers and eat them (i.e. the chips). That's how much I love you, he tells the entranced Paula. I always thought that the working class, at least in social realist fiction, preferred to eat their chips out of old newspapers. Is there a new idea here for Leo Burdock?
Or what is the reader to make of Paula's introduction to the Spencer family. "(I hadn't met his family yet, of course. They were all robbers. It was in their blood. They robbed that as well, out of Pelican House.)" Again, I don't say it couldn't or even hasn't happened but robbing blood from Pelican House To sell to whom? A desperate anaemic in Barrytown? A manic depressive intent on slow suicide?
In other areas of experience, such as Paula's envious fantasies as she goes house cleaning in a salubrious suburb of Dublin, Doyle is closer to credibility. He also strikes genuine chords in his description of Paula's honeymoon. Credit where it's due.
Overall, however, Doyle's fictional concoction of Dublin working class life is no longer a joke or a startling revelation. That Doyle still knows his working class Dubliners is not in doubt. What is in doubt is his intentions. To judge by The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, it is arguable that that concoction now constitutes defamation of social class (though I don't know who is going to bring the case to court). Yet doubtless many readers will love it.
Is that because and I am returning to my initial point of Doyle's fiction as subject matter for sociologists any recognition is better than nothing at all? At least Doyle in his fiction is recognising the existence of contemporary Dublin working class life. Some of the truth is there, astutely blended with predominantly crude caricaturing and stereotyping.