Any fan of Marian Keyes (and we are legion, as her 23 books, 30-year career and millions of sales attest) can give you a potted but passionate account of why (most often) she loves her. Keyes captures life as it is truly lived. It is lived as part of a family (Keyes is mercilessly attuned to the specific cadences and attitudes of a large, Irish Catholic one, but she is adept at rendering it universally relatable). We live as part of a couple, part of an office, part of a community (wanted or – if you are, for example, an addict, a woman having fertility treatment, or a domestic violence victim – unwanted). Or as a sister, a daughter, a polished professional, or a hot mess (the last two by no means mutually exclusive).
In Keyes’ version, all life’s highs are burnished and its lows made bearable by the human capacity for finding the humour in everything. Her books – once dismissed as “chick lit”, “romcoms” or AN Other of the sniffy labels people have attached to novels written by women, largely for women, about largely female experiences (though I think we are starting to move out of that tiresomely reductive era) – hold all these elements in perfect balance.
