Bridget Jones with a brogue
I was half-way through Marian Keyes's new novel when I realised something: I didn't know what religion her characters were. I don't think I've ever read a novel by an Irish writer set in Dublin which omitted this information. Granted, the body of English-language literature would be the poorer were it not for the baleful strain of Catholic Guilt, but here is a refreshing indication that there's change afoot in Ireland, wrought by the so-called "Celtic Tiger" economy.
According to Keyes, the 30-ish generation there couldn't give a tinker's cuss about the Catholic-Protestant divide. "The power of the Catholic Church is waning fast," she says. "The country's less of a theocracy; more democratic."
These are turbulent times, she admits, and while there's a lot of positive change (there is no longer an exodus of young people overseas, for instance), there are new problems rearing up - such as homelessness.
"With the influx of people, and the rise of property prices, those at the bottom of the home-owning ladder are falling off." It is a cause she has taken to heart. One of her more endearing characters in Sushi for Beginners is Boo, a filthy young man who lives in the doorway of a block of flats, caught in the classic holding pattern of no job, no address; no address, no job.
The proceeds from Keyes's next book, a collection of her journalism called Under the Duvet, due out later this year, will be donated to the Simon Trust, a homeless charity in Dublin.
Homelessness, depression, infidelity, promiscuity. Dark themes for a writer who makes you bark with laughter as you follow her mad characters. Keyes may be considered Irish Lite, she may be packaged for airports, bracketed in the chick-lit genre and patronised as a pulp writer, but don't be deceived. She has been called The Voice of A Generation, and she is a very perceptive, very skilled writer.
Dialogue, as any writer will tell you, is very hard to do. Comic dialogue, with its timing and rhythm and witty references, is even harder.
Then again, its something the Irish do very well: that clichéd twinkling, mocking, often self-deprecating humour that is iced over a history of repression and bloodiness.
Keyes agrees: "The Irish have always used laughter as a survival mechanism. The Jews have as well. The best comedy comes from darkness. They work together, comedy and pain."
Certainly Keyes has known enough pain herself. She is a tiny, pert woman with a wedge of hair as sheeny black as printer's ink, and amused, opal eyes.
She has sold 5 million copies of five books in almost as many years. And yet she acts like a child who has woken up on Christmas morning to find that all of the presents under the tree are for her. She has a humble, this-can't-possibly-be-happening-to-me manner that is disarming.
It's hard to believe that seven-and-a-half years ago she attempted suicide, demented by depression and alcoholism. She was lonely, living in London and working in an accounts office despite having a law degree.
"I'd lost interest in other human beings," she says. "I still had an infrastructure to my life - a job, a flat and so on - but my head was a wasteland. I couldn't stop drinking."
Luckily, she ended up in rehab. "I was 30 and I thought my life was over if I could never drink again."
Now she knows she never will, but still touches wood when she says it. "I still have bad days, but that constant bleakness is gone. I've learned that everything is survivable."
Towards the end of her last bender she started writing short stories in an attempt, she says, to hold onto herself. She sent them to a publisher with a note saying she also had a novel on the go, and the word came back from the publishers to send the non-existent manuscript. It was her turning point.
Sushi for Beginners is her fifth novel, set in the world of magazines. The diamond-hard Lisa is reluctantly seconded from London to launch Colleen, Ireland's answer to Cosmo. Brittle and ambitious, she is livid at being sent to this village that is Dublin, but has no choice but to make a go of it. Her deputy is Ashling, still at 31 carrying the weight of her mother's lifelong depression on her able shoulders. Her best friend Clodagh, seems to have it all, a wealthy handsome husband and two children, but she's going quietly nuts with the dreariness of motherhood. There's Ted, an aspirant stand-up comic, and Joy who looks for love in all the wrong places.
They all smoke too much, get "trolley" drunk and shag each other, fight, make-up and take to their beds when it all gets too much. Keyes's take on the magazine world is wickedly funny: the freebies and thumb-suck stories, swigging Champagne intended as prized, ridiculous fashion shoots:
"The model was made up with streaks of mud on her face and straw in her long black hair, then positioned on a chrome and white-leather couch. A half-eaten pizza lay beside her and a chrome remote control was placed in her hands. Apparently she was supposed to be watching telly. There was much talk of 'irony' and 'contrast' 'It looks fucking stupid,' Trix whispered to Ashling."
In her next novel, Keyes turns her hand to an even more absurd world - Los Angeles. She and her husband have just spent a month there, gobsmacked, as she would say, at the lunacy of it all.
"Their value system is all skewed. All they want is perfect teeth and a body beautiful. D'you know," she starts giggling, "they go to the gym in the middle of the night. And the gyms have floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto the street! Where I come from, gym is something sweaty you do in secret!"
Keyes moved back to Dublin a few years ago after a length exile in Britain.
"It's a great city," she says. "We always say that there are about 13 people in Dublin and they do the rest with mirrors. But I like that, everyone knowing everyone else, being with people who you've known you all your life. I wouldn't live anywhere else now."