Reality is key to Marian's rise to the big time

The doyenne of Irish thirtysomething angst has to be bestselling Marian Keyes, the writer who shot to prominence a few years ago with Watermelon, her debut novel.

The entertaining story about Claire, a married woman whose husband deserts her just after the birth of their first child, was published by Poolbeg Press.

The company astutely used Keyes' real-life experience of alcoholism in its marketing campaign for the book.

Keyes' latest novel, Rachel's Holiday, about a single female junkie who is undergoing rehabilitation, is published by Penguin in England.

It is riding high in the English chart, and currently stands at No. 3 in their bestsellers list.

Keyes now blissfully married and on the wagon admits freely that she writes about her own life, although she promises that her fourth novel will be a departure from the format.

"I felt that there was nothing out there for me to read, there was nothing being published that I could identify with," Keyes says about starting to write.

"There were no women that I felt I knew in popular fiction.

"I was tired of badly-written, unintelligent books that insulted the reader.

"So I thought, 'I'm going to write mass market but it's not going to be stupid and it's going to be about real people who live messy lives and make mistakes.

"Not some Aga saga shite,'" she says.