Marian Keyes
Marian Keyes isn't your typical author. To start with, writing isn't something that she has always wanted to do. In fact, she refers to herself as an 'accidental author', but if her success is anything to go by, it was an accident waiting to happen.
For not only is she an award winning fiction novelist, but the events of her own life up to now could certainly produce a compelling page turner.
Born in Limerick, West Ireland, but brought up in Dublin, Keyes, 46, obtained a law degree and spent her twenties in London where, with her typical dry humour, jokes how she "put it to good use by getting a job as a waitress."
Suffering from a lack of confidence, as “there was nothing more inappropriate than an Irish woman with high self-esteem,” Keyes started drinking to block out her problems. By the time she was 30, the drinking turned destructive, resulting in a suicide attempt.
In an interview with The Independent she said: “I think in retrospect [it] was just an attempt to blow everything up in my face - to make me have to accept help.”
Keyes was sent to rehab, which changed the perception she held of herself. Instead of regarding herself as a “weirdo” and an “outsider”, Keyes began to realise that she wasn’t so different after all; this realisation has surfaced more as she has got older. She told Metro:
“I've got less neurotic, less judgmental, more accepting of myself. It's a lovely, compensatory aspect of growing older, that those voices in your head recede. Your hair might be going grey but the voices in your head aren’t as loud.”
With the experiences she has gone through, it is not surprising that Keyes’s novels centre on themes of depression, addiction and illness. But what makes the author so gifted is her ability to infuse comedy into the mix. “In my experience the best comedy is rooted in darkness,” she says.
Her current novel, The Charming Man, certainly conforms to this pattern. It tells the story of four women that are shaped by one man. Each one experiences hardship in life, whether it be depression, self-doubt or domestic abuse. But, in typical Keyes style, there is always that witty element that appears every now and then to lighten the load.
The novel is currently poll position on The Sunday Times best selling paperback fiction list. But, wait a minute. Current novel? Best selling? Just how did a woman who was on the verge of suicide, manage to turn her life around in this way?
“I began writing short stories four months before I finally stopped drinking, and after I came out of rehab I decided to send them off to a publisher,” she says.
In 1995, the publisher asked her to develop these stories into a novel, which she did – in just a week. The result was Watermelon, which was eventually made into a television drama, starring Anna Friel.
The success of her debut offering led Keyes to become a full-time writer in 1996. From there, she went on to produce a variety of other novels such as Rachel’s Holiday, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married – both of which were adapted to film and television, and the critically acclaimed Anybody Out There? which earned Keyes the Sainsbury’s Popular Fiction Award for best novel in 2007.
Married to Tony, an English solicitor, the couple found themselves unable to have children, due to fertility problems. But despite one of her novels, Angels, being centred on infertility, Keyes is keen to stress that the story is not based on her own difficulties – as assumed by a lot of people.
“I haven't had miscarriages. I haven't had children, and I did want children, but that story is absolutely not my story. That bothered me,” she told The Independent.
Having sold millions of copies of her books worldwide, most of which have been translated into 32 different languages, Keyes appears to have put the troubles of her past well and truly behind her.
Unlike her younger years, she is now living the stable life she craved for. “I used to be addicted to shoes, handbags and chocolate in all its wonderful forms. I’ve given up the chocolate, and I’m learning to cook proper food. All quite normal, really.”
The Charming Man is out now.
FemaleFirst: Fiona Haran
Read our review on The Charming Man