USA Today
There's something deeply satisfying about being on the inside of a joke. Candid Camera was a hit TV show based on that fact. Viewers could sit back and chuckle at the poor fool wearing a tutu to what he thought was a costume party, without worrying that they would be the next target.
But for Rachel Walsh, the tormented heroine of Marian Keyes' delightful novel Rachel's Holiday, the joke's on her - permanently.
With Bridget Jonesesque self-pity Rachel imagines her life as "Cosmic Candid Camera." God is a comedian, she his favourite prop.
"Now watch, he chuckles, 'as Rachel hurries to meet her new boyfriend. See how she catches the heel of her shoe in a grating? Little did Rachel know that we had tampered with it. See how she limps the rest of the way?"Rachel is a pathetic but hilarious and surprisingly charming Irish lass who never grew up. Twenty-seven and living in Manhattan, she tries to lead the "glamorous" life, partying with models and people who know famous people.
But this so-called glamorous life costs her her job, her boyfriend, her best friend and almost her life in an endless chain of "embarrassing misunderstandings."
But it wasn't her fault. So what if she snorts a line of coke now and the? She's not an addict. She's certainly not thin enough to be an addict, anyway.
Keyes deftly navigates the psychological disaster zone of a drug problem beginning with the first stage denial. She constructs the mind-set of an addict: Rachel's desperate excuses and explanations reach absurd levels.
After Rachel OD's and her "abstention fascist" roommate calls her family in Ireland, she ends up back home in a treatment centre.
There she watches as Josephine, her bad-cop counsellor, breaks through the walls of denial with the "brown sweaters" (tea-drinking middle-aged men with a penchant for cardigans who fill the centre) and the other addicts.
Much to her surprise, her turn comes too.
Brigit, the ex-roommate, and Luke, the ex-boyfriend, testify to her problem. Rachel is horrified by what she considers a betrayal but finally recognizes her addiction.
All of this sounds terribly depressing. But Keyes handles it with a tight touch, injecting humour at every turn. Rachel is an endearing character, and her progress, however slow, is genuinely satisfying.
It's clear from the depth of the character profiles and group therapy scenes that Keyes, who is married to a psychiatrist, did her homework.
That's what makes the novel so compelling. You don't have to be an addict to relate to the patients as Josephine uncovers the emotional issues hiding behind their addictions. That and the lusty romance scenes between Luke and Rachel.