Sunday Express
This, the fifth novel by Marian Keyes, should come with a health warning. It's totally addictive. Pick this one up for a quick leaf through and my advice to you is don't make any plans, because you will not be putting it down again until you're finished. And at 564 pages that could take some time.
Put simply, it's brilliant! A real page-turner but with far more wit, skill and insight than are usually found in books of this genre.
SFB centres round three women: Lisa, the bitchy glossy-magazine-editor-from-hell who wants to go to New York but ends up in Dublin, Ashling, her underling and Clodagh, Ashling's best friend from childhood, now married and settled in the suburbs.
We know from the start that one of them is going to have a nervous breakdown - a preliminary scene describes the breakdown but not the protagonist. So who is it, and why?
Marian Keyes is one of the new generation of Irish women writers making her name and on the basis of this book - I haven't read the others - she deserves every drop of acclaim. For a start, the characters are rounded, well fleshed-out creations: for example Lisa, the stick-thin mag hag obsessed with the latest must-have and appalled to find herself in the backwater that is Dublin today, appears to be truly awful but becomes increasingly sympathetic.
Without copping out - Lisa remains true to her values - you end up rooting for her.
Ashling, Clodagh and the supporting characters (including the romantic hero, and if the book has a flaw, it's that I guessed that's who he was when he was first mentioned) are also perceptively drawn.
And while wishing to give no plot turns away, more than one character behaves badly - this is never excused but the reasons are explained.
The other star of the book is Dublin itself. Lisa the Londoner thinks she's ended up in a dump - we, the wiser reader, know better. This is a modern, vibrant, cosmopolitan city. One, in fact, which is capable of producing a talent such as Marian Keyes.