23.10.2009

Marian Keyes: subverting the stereotypes

Marian Keyes: subverting the stereotypes

Marian Keyes lives in Dublin. She has published six novels, which have all been international bestsellers, garnering great reviews and selling more than 2.5 million copies: Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, Last Chance Saloon and Sushi for Beginners and Angels.

Marian Keyes is back swinging the doors of heartache and hilarity with Last Chance Saloon. Meet Tara, the rapidly expanding food-loving shopaholic; Katherine, the neat, male-ego-destroying singleton; Fintan, the fashion-conscious lovely, and Lorcan, the gorgeous but rotten redheaded womaniser. Marian Keyes deliberately deploys stereotypical characters and situations, then attempts to subvert the stereotypes, though perhaps in rather obvious ways. Throughout, Tara bores us with her lament that she is at the last chance saloon, meaning that if she ends her current relationship at 31, she's on the shelf for life. "For the first time Tara visualised it and she contracted with fear. It was like being told to jump off a cliff ... 'But what would become of me without Thomas? I'd never get anyone else and I hate not having a man. And it's not something I'm proud of' she added quickly. 'I'm going to puke', Fintan interrupted, urgently." Those who can resist the urge to follow Fintan's lead on the umpteenth rendition of this particular complaint will enjoy the book. It's addictive--reading The Last Chance Saloon is like watching the omnibus edition of Sunset Beach; you know the acting is awful and the same scenes keep on repeating themselves but you can't help being hooked and feeling sated afterwards. At almost 600 pages, settle down for a Saturday afternoon and don't expect to be getting up again until Sunday.

Tara, Katherine and Fintan have been friends since they were teenagers in Knockaway, County Clare, in the days of legwarmers, pink stretch jeans and Duran Duran. Now in their early 30s, they live in London where they are still bound together. But fate is about to step in and alter their lives.

Sushi For Beginners has all the right ingredients for a thirtysomething novel. The thirtysomething girls are there, looking for a better job, a better man, ANYTHING other than what they've already got; there are men to die for and men you wish would drop dead, preferably in agony. And these "so-real you can pinch 'em" people live their lives in a funny, thrilling, sad world that you wish hadn't just ended when you turn the last page. But there is more, because this one is written by best-selling Irish author Marian Keyes.

Where her previous best-seller, Last Chance Saloon, featured Irish folk living in London, Sushi For Beginners is set in Keyes' hometown, Dublin. The only "foreigner" here is Lisa from London, a real madam whose longed-for promotion to Manhattan magazine is knocked off-course a few thousand miles when she is forced to accept the editorship of Colleen, a new magazine for young women, billed by the publishers as "dumbed-down" but definitely "sexy". Lisa would frankly rather eat one of her freebie Patrick Cox stilettos. Still a job is a job, and anyhow, Irish MD Jack Devine could just turn out to be a major consolation prize. Lisa's deputy at Colleen is Ashling, a Little Miss Fix-It, whose early role reversal with her mother (thanks to the latter's nervous breakdown) has induced an organisational paranoia and a handbag filled with emergency equipment to meet any eventuality. Oh, and a best friend whose motives might not always be in Ashling's best interests.

This is a story of three girls' lives, what's made them what they are and their search for happiness--sometimes found in unlikely places and sometimes lost forever. With Sushi For Beginners, Keyes is fast becoming the undisputed Queen of her genre. She is wincingly accurate and wickedly funny, and while she can tackle big issues like homelessness (no pun intended) with honest feeling devoid of over-sentimentality, her insight into the aspirations of thirtysomething women at the turn of the 21st century sets her high above the competition.

A nervous breakdown seems like a great idea: all that lying in bed and watching daytime TV. But who's going to have it? Will it be housewife Clodagh, who spends her days microwaving pasta for her demanding toddlers and waiting for her beautiful husband Dylan to come home? Or Lisa, hard, brittle and shiny as an M&M, reeling from the shock of a demotion from her fabulous job in London to a one-horse magazine in Dublin? Or Ashling, so normal she's weird?

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