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Keyes's fifth novel is the story of three women. One has the perfect career, until, that is, the overachieving, under eating, London magazine editor. Lisa is given the unwelcome new job of launching a glossy in Ireland with only a bunch of provincial amateurs to help her. Another has the perfect marriage and children, though the beautiful, curvy Clodagh is usually bored witless with her handsome husband, photogenic children and tasteful home.
Making up the trinity is Ashling: unlike the other two, nothing about her life is, or ever has been , even theoretically perfect. Utterly unintimidating, she has low self-esteem, no waist, dull brown hair and a history of clinical depression. Her vulnerability is the emotional and moral heart of the book; to use Keyes's description of another character, she has "loser star quality".
But this is a comic romance, not a tragedy, and the first rule of comedy is contrast. The first joke is Lisa's horror at exchanging her high-octane, low-calorie London life for rain-drenched provincialism an ocean away form the nearest Club Monaco counter. Then there's her assistant editor, the humble Ashling, a woman whose idea of a good night out is drinking a few beers while watching a stand-up comedian and whose main assets as a journalist are a knack for organisation and a bag full of plasters and headache pills.
But if unthreatening Ashling's professional and social aspirations are below those of her glamorous, gifted boss, her domestic circumstances - living alone in a tiny, untidy rented flat - are the polar opposite of her best friend Clodagh's impeccably decorated house in a fashionable part of Dublin.
Spoilt, bitchy and utterly selfish, Clodagh is for my money the novel's most successful character. Her frustration at finding herself "married alive" resounds with authenticity. Her attempts to stave off boredom by stencilling borders, her envy of Ashling's career, her hilariously described dread of monthly sex with her husband, her toe-curling shopping trips with her children, which descend into chaos and anarchy as they wipe ice-creams on expensive sofa fabrics and scream blue murder in shopping centres, will ring loud and familiar bells with parents (and friends of parents) everywhere.
Yet there are many dark shadows in this novel: Clodagh's inevitable affair is just one, followed by the perfect husband leaving and her realising for the first time that there are certain things for which even she will never be forgiven. For her, there is no happy ending. As for the others, Ashling somewhat predictably ends up with the dashing Irish maverick managing director of her dreams and Lisa achieves personal growth far beyond that which is removed at the salon every month.
Keyes's greatest strength as a writer is her unerring eye for comic vulnerability. Through perceptive and funny (in particular with her description of AbFab glossy magazine life), she is a sympathist, rather than a satirist. Gifted with a wonderful turn of phrase, she is warm-hearted poet of everyday anguish - Ashling's hand-writing embarrassment at visiting parents from whom she has grown apart exemplifies this brilliance at humorous pathos. Her characters are satisfyingly complex, which makes them all, however different, sympathetic.
Ultimately, Keyes's theme - that the only true success is personal happiness - is as comforting as her unique brand of warm, self-effacing Irish charm.