The title comes from an incident where Paula's husband asks her how she received a bruise he was responsible for, and she replies that she "walked into a door."

The narrative blends her recounting of the circumstances of her childhood, courtship and wedding day, with reflections on those events.

The New York Times praised "Mr. Doyle's entirely unsentimental and perfectly attuned comprehension of the real world of the Irish present.

"[1] Robert Christgau wrote that Doyle "has the decency to understand that the most constrained human life is never simple, and the grace and guts to prove how unimpoverished the countless meanings of that truth can be.

It received its world premiere in November 2001 at deSingel in Antwerp, and toured extensively before being played in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre in October 2003.