This Charming Man by Marian Keyes

This Charming Man

Marian Keyes’ stories make me feel better. They make me want to sit down and have a cup of tea, and tell her all my fears, hopes and secrets.

This Charming Man”, like many of Keyes’ novels, has a dark heart but a hilarious, raw, heart-wrenching façade. I’ll be honest – the first time I read it, I had to struggle to get through the first 50 pages. I was disappointed, as I couldn’t figure out where it was going. But disappointment is about your own expectations, not about what you’re reading, so I persevered. I’m so glad I did. “This Charming Man” is moving, brutal and uplifting all at the same time. It’s about five women and one man, Paddy de Courcy. Narrating different chapters, the women give a complex picture of Paddy and how he changed them all. Lola is like a little sparrow – fidgety, distracted and easily scared. Grace is more substantial, with more steel and more secrets (or so it seems).

Marnie is troubled from the start. Watching her slide is gut-wrenching.

Alicia is like a stubborn puppy, naïve, determined and eager to please all at the same time.

Dee is ambitious and focused, and her goodwill and exacting justice will humble you.

Their stories are punctuated by short bursts of anonymous scenes, which become increasingly violent, and increasingly awful as you begin to understand what they are.

The characters don’t give away everything upfront. In fact, one of Lola’s most telling revelations and its aftermath come on page 442. The shock of it, after being lulled into a picture of Lola’s character, makes you look again at your own perceptions of the women in the story. I think what Keyes does here is challenge what we think psychological abuse and domestic violence look like. Do you know someone inside an abusive relationship? Would you even know? What does it look like? Do we recognize psychological abuse?

Keyes’ main characters are almost always women, which is probably why her literature gets tainted with the title ‘chick-lit’. I’m all for chick lit, but it’s become almost a slur, a way of saying a book has plenty of style but little substance. In Keyes’ case, this is not true at all.

The first Marian Keyes book I read was more than 10 years ago. The title completely put me off. I thought it was going to be Jilly Cooper style, self-absorbed, highbrow fluff. How wrong I was! Her books have always been funny, but they delve into your soul, and cover issues such as alcoholism, rape, domestic violence, drug abuse, cancer, divorce, infidelity and death. It’s not a cheery list, but hey – life’s full of slings and arrows.

Pretending otherwise is what creates chick-lit. Dealing with those slings and arrows and making you laugh at the same time is what makes Keyes such a master (I’d say mistress but it has bad connotations) of modern literature.

Read this if you like reading full stop – if you don’t like Marian Keyes you should reconsider your qualifications for good fiction.

Title: This Charming Man
Author: Marian Keyes
Format: Paperback, 676 pages
Publisher: Penguin/Michael Joseph