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The Entertainer
Marian Keyes' latest novel deals with the difficult subject of bereavement but, in her own inimitable way, she once again finds humour in life's biggest tragedies.
While she's written some of the most entertaining Irish novels of the last decade, Anybody Out There may just be Marian Keyes's best book to date. It's the story of Anna Walsh, a Dubliner in Manhattan, who is recovering from a personal tragedy that has left her with several broken bones and a battered face. Her husband Aidan won't reply to her calls and emails. And, employed by a notorious Dublin gangster, her outrageous private eye sister Helen has troubles of her own.
This is the fourth book by Keyes about the Walsh family, whom readers first encountered in her 1995 debut novel Watermelon. Having written about Claire, Rachel and Maggie Walsh, Keyes says "It was Anna's turn" Like the Walshes, Keyes comes from a family of five children. "Although the Walshes aren't individually like any of us, the atmosphere is the same. We're very close but we're very bickery and noisy." They know she's not about to reveal any family secrets, although her mother was initially suspicious. "When my first book came out, she thought I'd written an expose of the Keyes family and she was very annoyed! I had to convince her it was all fiction." Keyes has always written about serious subjects, drug addiction, depression, infertility. But there was always hope in her treatment of them. And, as we discover nearly halfway through the book, the tragedy that blights Anna's life - and look away now if you don't want to know - is irreversible. Because Aidan is never going to contact her. Because he died in the accident that left Anna seriously injured. "For a while, [my husband] Tony and I gave it the working title `He's Dead and He's Not Coming Back'," laughs Keyes. "I just knew I wanted to write about bereavement. I think it's because at this stage in my life, my parents are getting older and I've been thinking about their mortality and my own. But I didn't want to write about losing a parent, partly because I didn't want to destroy the dynamic of the Walsh family."
Despite the subject matter, the book isn't a tragedy - Anna's own story is leavened with humour and there are many more laughs in the fantastic emails received from her sister and mother detailing their encounters with organised crime. Keyes has always been able to seamlessly blend tragedy and comedy. "It is a balancing act," she says. "Because I don't want to dishonour truly moving scenes with a cheap laugh. I wouldn't be interested in a book that was just humour, or a book that hadn't any."
At first, Keyes found it hard to get that balance right in Anybody Out There? "Originally, it was just Anna's narrative but I knew the book wasn't right," she recalls. "It was really hard to write, I was really anxious throughout it. It wasn't balanced, it was too bleak. It needed something else." Keyes had finished writing Anna's story when, suddenly she thought of using Helen's private detective adventures for comic relief. She wrote the entire sub-plot narrative in one day. "It was the last piece in the jigsaw. And I really enjoyed writing it."
If she does get sick of writing, however, she has an alternative career planned. Recently, she's been making a lot of soup and jokes that she could start selling it from the bay window of her Dun Laoghaire sitting room. "I've it all planned," she says. "I'd sell the soup in lovely pink flasks." If her soups are nearly as good as her books, she could be onto a winner.
Anna Carey, Image Magazine