Why I love Marian Keyes
In 1997 I read two books that changed my life. I didn’t know it then of course - but they did - in the way that only books can, and in ways that ripple through my life even now, twenty-eight year later. The two books were Drinking, A Love Story by Caroline Knapp, and Rachel's Holiday by
.Drinking, A Love Story is a beautiful memoir of journalist Knapp’s drinking life and was the first time I had ever come across the idea that it was possible to be a functioning alcoholic. I was twenty-seven years old and thought that alcoholics were seedy men on park benches. Knapp was so like me it stung. Including the fact that from the outside her life looked normal, successful even, masking her underlying turmoil.
I read the book in a park in the Sydney sunshine (I was living in Australia at the time) and reading about the concept of a ‘geographical’ (where an addict might move city/state or job in order to ‘start again’ and escape the consequences of their substance use, as though a move is all that is required) was a little too close to my own move to the other side of the world to acknowledge.
It was not long after that I started Rachel’s Holiday. Anyone who has read it will know that the ‘holiday’ referred to is a stint in Irelands premier rehab facility, The Cloisters, where we learn about Rachel Walsh’s life leading up to her time there while following her progress as an inpatient over six weeks. It begins with Rachel insisting that she isn’t an addict. That this is all a big mistake, but one she goes along with because, frankly, she could do with the rest. It is a funny, moving, sometimes sexy (we’ll come back to Luke Costello) novel and remains the best portrayal of addiction in fiction I’ve ever read.
In 1997, at the start of the book however, I agreed with Rachel. She wasn’t an addict. This Marian woman doesn’t know what she’s writing about, I thought. She clearly doesn’t remember what it’s like to be young, when drinking and taking drugs to excess is normal (I didn’t know then that Marian is in recovery herself). But as Rachel’s denial was chipped away at through the course of the book, so was mine. It took me ten more years to get sober, but Drinking, A Love Story and Rachel’s Holiday were the beginning. I will always be grateful for that.
Since then, I have read everything Marian has written. I feel as though I’ve grown up (as much as I will ever grow up) with the Walsh sisters. I’ve experienced heartbreak with Claire, I’ve grieved with Anna, had depression with Helen, been a recovery evangelist with Rachel and very, very occasionally lived a more ‘normal’ life with Margaret. I’ve also fallen in love with Luke Costello, but I mean, who hasn’t? The skill it takes to write a man EVERYONE wants to sleep with should not be underestimated. Her standalone novels have created worlds all of their own, each one so fully satisfying and enriching as well as always laugh out loud funny.
When I went through my worst ever depression (what Marian refers to as ‘the mads’) I bought her book ‘Saved by Cake’ which contains the recipes she baked when unable to write through her own experience of debilitating depression. I baked those cakes and posted them on Twitter, and through our connection on there, I saw Marian get better and I thought that maybe I could get better too.
Through her latest novel ‘My Favourite Mistake’ (out in paperback now) I’ve got to be peri-menopausal with Anna Walsh and to revisit one of the longest will-they, won’t-they relationships of the series, between Anna and Narky Joey. My Favourite Mistake is just as funny, insightful and human as all the rest. It is like returning to old friends, but with fresh eyes.
I read A LOT of books, and no-one can make me laugh and cry like Marian, often in the space of a page. Her novels are all page turners, while at the same time having something profound to say about the experience of being human. That’s a rare talent. They’re just so filled with… well… love.
I went to see Marian speak for the first time in 2020. It was just before the world locked down, at the launch of Grown Ups. During the Q+A an audience member asked what qualifications she thought writers needed, and Marian replied, ‘voracious readers learn to write by osmosis,’ and just like that my life changed again. I can still remember the journey home, the words ringing in my ears. I knew then that I would write a novel.
Cut to 2024 when I genuinely believed my life had peaked when Marian posted a reel on Instagram about The List of Suspicious Things. She called my voice ‘beguiling.’ She said she couldn’t stop reading. She said she’d cried. I must’ve have watched it a thousand times. I could recite it word for word. But then last night I met her in person.
In the Instagram version of this story, it was a beautiful and serene experience. Two writers sharing their love of the craft and their admiration for each other, calmly, and with reverence and respect. Instead, as I relayed to a writer friend in a voicenote afterwards ‘I think I may have been … quite intense.’ Reader, that is an understatement. I was REALLY intense. I babbled at her and everyone in the green room, including ‘himself’ and Lucy Mangan (oh the mortification). I also swore liberally and unnecessarily. I used the term starfucker twice ffs (I am SO sorry Marian). Marian was of course, calm, kind and so interested in me I almost couldn’t fathom it. Why would she be interested in me. Surely it should be the other way around.
In the brief moments I wasn’t exuding some sort of crazed-fan energy we talked about what lipstick she was wearing (Maybelline) and how I get my hair just so (YouTube) which, on second thoughts, probably would make it to the Instagram version of this story, and it was as though we had known each other forever. I was also INCREDIBLY touched that she remembered me from before I became a writer, in the days when Twitter was good, and we would all live tweet Strictly on a Saturday night.
The event itself was wonderful. Lucy did a brilliant job of interviewing and Marian is so naturally warm and funny I laughed like it was stand up. I felt truly connected to everyone in the room and to Marian herself. That’s an incredible power to have, and Marian uses it for good.
They say don’t meet your heroes, well, I did. And she just as wonderful as I could have hoped for, even if I did behave like a complete twat.
The ability to make a reader laugh and cry, simultaneously, is all Marian. I feel like I’ve grown up with her too. As a young woman I discovered her books on holiday on a Greek island with a boyfriend who was awful and somehow Marian’s writing made me kick him into touch. Her writing is simply phenomenal. I too am at the perimenopausal stage and her books are one of the very few I revisit (there are too many books to read any twice, but hers are worth a second and third helping)
I came across Rachel’s Holiday many years ago and as a recovered anorexic, coujd well recognise the signs of denial and addiction. That book made such an impression for her funny yet painful and wise portrayal of someone desperately in need of help. Her best book I think and one I’ve read and read again. The cover portrays nothing of the content.