Marian Keyes This Charming Man 03-2009

(ABC BOOK REVIEW)

Summary:

Lola, Grace, Marnie and Alicia lead their own separate lives, with different jobs and different interests, but page by page we discover they share one thing: they all know a certain Paddy de Courcy. And we also discover that this is not a good thing.

Full Story:

(contains spoilers)

Four women each allow the reader into their lives, with alternating chapters, in alternating font (for clarity?).

Lola is the (seemingly) happy Bridget Jones-type girl, who works as a freelance stylist, who writes in a Bridget Jones way, eliminating unnecessary words in a sentence, blogstyle I guess you could call it.

Grace is the slightly more mature journalist, a bit more grounded and realistic.

Marnie is Grace’s sister, who seems to be in very bad shape, although it is not immediately clear that, in fact, she has a major alcohol problem.

Alicia is the girl Paddy just got engaged to, although she knows it is mainly for his image that he needs to marry, he is a respected politician.

When chapters alternate, we become more familiar with the four lives, and discover that there are some nasty memories from their time with mister Paddy. Paddy is apparently a charmer, but he is an abuser also.

My opinion:

Despite the segmented structure of the novel (which seems to be normal since I come across it so often) the reader does get a good look at the lives of these four women. It is quite a chunky novel. The cover of the book is purple with glitters and stars and everything, which led me to think it was a positive/optimistic book. At the start, it indeed seems to be a fun read, mainly because of the lighthearted blogstyle chapter it starts with, but it turns out it was far from it. Actually, several small ‘hints’, scattered in between chapters, were quite gruesome. I had not thought, nor had I hoped, this book would deal with such ugly descriptions of physical abuse and rape.

I certainly appreciate heavier topics in fiction, and no doubt Marian Keyes will write more successful novels with a lot of drama, but I would have wanted the cover to reflect the contents better. If I had not read the book, I would have been inclined to sell this novel to a customer as a light read for a vacation for instance.