Rachel’s Holiday (1998) was about addiction (a storyline that echoed its author’s own experience of alcoholism) the heroine of 2006’s Anybody Out There is pole-axed by grief 2008’s This Charming Man touches on domestic abuse but all these novels are full of rich dialogue and laughs. Often imitated, Keyes is much loved for her page‑turners that tackle weighty contemporary issues with a light touch. It’s a brave choice, too, to portray characters who are prey to bulimia and compulsive shopping – these are the addictions of middle-aged women with responsibilities, not the glamorous, wreck-it-all drug abuse that is more often the subject of fiction by and about men. “It wasn’t about the taste, it was about the feeling, chasing the calm, then the high.” Cara’s story is original, shocking and hypnotically gross, and only a writer with the warmth and empathy of Marian Keyes could pull it off. Cara is working in a swanky hotel, winning over difficult customers, binge-eating chocolate and making herself sick. And he does notice what’s going on with her, but he doesn’t know what to do. Keyes has a passionate curiosity about people and an immersion in an oral storytelling traditionĮd, meanwhile, is genuinely in love with his wife, Cara. Her first husband, who was Johnny’s best friend.

She threw herself into work the day her first husband died, leaving her widowed at 34 with two young children. She insists on paying for everyone to get together because she has always been secretly convinced that nobody really likes her. Jessie is the successful owner of a chain of specialist food shops, but her personal spending is out of control. Of course, each character is nothing like the role in which they are straitjacketed by the family. And, over an impressively catered palate cleanser of vodka and lemon sorbet, she starts spilling secrets that threaten to blow the Casey family apart.Ĭhapter two skips back to “six months earlier” and another gathering of the Caseys, with each subsequent chapter then leading us closer and closer to Sorbetgate and filling in the gaps to show how they got to be where they are. Jessie is bossy and in control Ed unobservant and a little dull Cara chaotic and rather rude Johnny a bit of a sexist … But Cara, it turns out, is suffering from concussion. It’s a straightforward and lightly comic scene, each character playing their immutable role within the family.

A large and happy family is gathered at a birthday party: brothers Johnny, Ed and Liam, their wives Jessie, Cara and Nell, and various children from marriages present and past are enjoying an elaborate meal – some of them more so than thers.

Grown ups marian keyes summary