First of all, apologies in the amount of time I've taken between posting. I've been reading away but real life seems to have got in the way of me actually writing about them. I've got a back-stack of books that I want to discuss with you, starting with Marian Keyes.
I was quite excited about reading Marian Keyes. She was the author most recommended to me by chick lit readers and I've read lots of her columns and she's always come across as warm, honest and, most importantly, funny. So I was looking forward to a treat.
I was initially disappointed. The first few hundred pages were a bit slow. The premise of story is that the main character, Lucy Sullivan (well, duh) goes along with her colleagues to see a fortune teller. She's told she'll be married within a year. The predictions made to the others start coming true ... will it happen to Lucy too? As she's newly single girl, this is a slightly frightening and unrealistic prospect. Unrealistic to her maybe - like Tasha in Straight Talking, Lucy has an eligible best friend, Daniel, waiting in the wings. Hum, wonder what's going to happen there? To save me going into the plot in much more detail, a couple of hundred pages later it does.
There were some more surprisingly elements to the storyline. Lucy's job is no way glamorous, it's a boringly tediously dull Office-type office job. It's probably closer to the average woman than Jane Green's high flying magazine writers and TV producers, though it's a lot duller to read about. In addition, Lucy suffers badly from depression. Keyes has written widely about her own battles with depression, I was refreshingly surprised to see it here and discussed so openly. So, some points of note, but not enough to keep me reading.
I did get hooked though and, typically, it's because of a man. Lucy meets Gus, a typical 'loveable Irish rouge' type and the man who it seems may be the man she's going to marry. Gus is charming and funny and cute. He's also unreliable. If you know my romantic history, you'll know who he reminded me of. Yes, Gus really reminded me of my ex. To do my ex credit, he's nothing like as much as a scoundrel as Gus turns out to be - however, certain situations in the novel reflected things I remembered about our relationship. It was a definite 'aha' moment - in a cartoon, a far away bell would have been struck as I realised the similarities. As the story unfolded, I began reading myself into the story, right down to the end when, after the break-up of the relationship, he runs straight into the arms of another women. Reading about it did more than remind me of that relationship, it also slightly shifted the way I thought about it, giving me a bit more of that famous 'closure'. One of my favourite bitter quotes from the horrible bit just before we broke up was when he told me we disagreed about something because I was so 'conventional', while he was 'unconventional'. It appears he is so unconventional he resembles a stereotypical chick lit character.
When we went to the School of Life reading class, we were given a really good quote about how you find yourself in stories (so good I can't remember the quote exactly, or who wrote it). This was definitely true for me of this book. I live a relatively calm and happy life - it's hard to think of books that don't fall into the so-called chick lit category that write about people like me. The main dramas in my life to date have all been in my love life - why should I be surprised when the book I find myself identifying most with is chick lit?
I was trying to think about books written specifically about contemporary women (rather than about wider issues) that aren't lumped into the category 'chick lit'. It's hard. It's also quite depressing. Me and the Girl from Clapham has written a good piece about how when a man pursues a women to the end of the earth it's romantic, when a woman pursues a man she's a stalker. I was wondering if this gender imbalance also applied to books. When women write about relationships, are they only allowed to be frivolous and read by only women? Men like Nick Hornby write about relationships and they are widely read by both sexes, still get reviewed in the broadsheets and are allowed to be openly discussed without disparagement. I know lots of females who love a bit of Hornby but wouldn't touch chick lit with a barge pole - me too before I started on this adventure. Where are their stories being written and discussed?
As you can tell, Marian Keyes gave me a lot to think about and stirred up lots of long shoved away memories. So I decided my following book would be something a bit more light-hearted to read. Next mission, Looking for Andrew McCarthy.
