Anybody Out There?, by Marian Keyes
Four Stars
The fourth of Marian Keyes’ Walsh family novels features Anna,transformed from the dippy hippie of earlier novels into a hard-charging PR woman in NYC. But as the novel opens she’s back in the family home in Dublin, recovering from serious injuries from an accident that has left her face scarred and her husband absent. In Keyes’ signature style for Walsh family novels, in the first part of the book she twins the then story of Anna meeting and marrying her husband, Aidan, with the now story of her recovery in Ireland and return to a demanding workplace in New York promoting a hot line of cosmetics. Those stories converge to reveal what’s happened to Aidan.
SPOILER ALERT
By the time Keyes reveals that Aidan died in the accident that injured Anna, the revelation isn’t much of a surprise, but plucky Anna has captured the reader’s sympathy. The plaintiveness of her frequent email messages to Aidan and calls to his cell phone underscore the terrible absence she feels after returning to the apartment they shared, so it was easy for me to understand why, even after facing the fact that he’s dead, she keeps wondering, “Where is he?” I sympathized with her turn to psychics in an effort to find relief and Anna’s furtive planning to escape the attentions of family and friends who wanted to keep her busy in hopes of getting her back to normal as quickly as possible. I found Anna’s year of magical thinking as realistic as that depicted by Joan Didion in her memoir with that title.
Another aspect of the novel that worked for me was the PR/fashionista background with the T-Rex of a demanding boss, the strategizing to land coverage in coveted magazines, the over-the-top outfits required to fit the brand image, etc. In this novel Keyes leaves behind the breeziness of pure chick-lit by giving her sympathetic character a very dark problem to work through and significant challenges in her work life, all of which works very well. I can only conclude that it was at her editor’s insistence that readers would want some lighter fare in this story that Keyes added the subplot told in emails from Dublin of Anna’s PI sister, Helen, and her wacky case involving the marital woes of an Irish crime boss, which was an irritating distraction to this reader.
Keyes has transformed herself into a much more serious novelist than many of her fans from her chick-lit days probably want, and in Anybody Out There, she’s trying to have it both ways. In This Charming Man, The Other Side of the Story, and The Brightest Star In The Sky, Keyes tells her story from the viewpoints of multiple characters and deals with a range of serious social ills, and those novels are by far her best. In the Walsh family novels, she’s hampered by the gimmick itself and the expectations of a breezy romp. To me, Anybody Out There is the best of that lot, but now that she’s published a novel focusing on the fifth and final Walsh sister — The Mystery of Mercy Close, featuring Helen — I hope she’ll retire the Walsh family and focus her energy on what she does best.
Angels, by Marian Keyes
Three Stars
Marian Keyes third Walsh sister novel, Angels, adds another interesting layer to the forumla she developed in book two: the breezy voice of chick lit, now and then stories depicting the lead-up to and consequences of an inciting crisis, and a more serious problem than the usual inane superficiality of chick-lit. To that mix Keyes adds an interesting primer on the screenwriter’s trade in Los Angeles. This outing features the second Walsh sister, Maggie, whose parents and siblings think she’s a perfect person who has never set a foot wrong. After her marriage and career implode, Maggie accepts the invitation to make a long visit to LA from her Irish best friend turned promising screenwriter. Like all the Walsh sisters, Maggie is soon looking for love in all the wrong places and loosening up enough from her “plain yogurt” sensibility to accept some makeover moments and give serious consideration to some alternative lifestyles. While lacking the darkness of the addiction plot in Rachel’s Holiday, the addition of the screenwriting how-to helps to keep the reader’s interest as Maggie’s story builds to a pleasant but satisfying end.