Evening Herald
-it's a great read, says VALERIE COX
NINE years ago, when Marian Keyes published her first novel, Watermelon, I interviewed her on local radio. Even then there was a sense of celebration - of the scribbler made good, the woman who was still a little dazed with her initial success. Her publishers, Poolbeg, added to the sense of celebration, sending reviewers a great big watermelon with her book.
This trick was to be repeated a year later when review copies of Lucy Sulli van is Getting Married were sent with tiny, perfectly-iced wedding cakes.
The engaging thing about the author is that she has been honest with her readers from the go.
There are no great mysteries, nothing to create a scandal about: Marian herself admitted her problems with the bottle and used them to great effect in Rachel's Holiday.
However, The Other Side of the Story is a bit different. She borrows Shakespeare's successful device of a play within a play, offering the reader a novel (or two or three) within the main novel. And her heroine, Gemma, crosses the boundary of kinship when she writes about the disintegration of her own family and the problems created by her father walking out.
It has been said that Marian's novels are "girly chats" with a friend - and this is so true.
Keyes's fans will recall that Sushi for Beginners delved into the world of magazine publishing.
This latest work brutally exposes the world of the bestseller. How much of it is autobiographical, you wonder.
The novel kicks off when Gemma's wimpish dad leaves her mum after 30 or so years of marriage,
Gemma - not always willingly or happily - steps in and looks after her mum while she collapses under the weight of her desertion.
Gemma starts sending her friend Susan the details of the break-up. These emails form the core of her book after Susan spots their potential and sends them to a publisher.
Then there's the agent, JoJo, who takes us through the whole process. Actually, anyone who wants to set loose a novel on an unsuspecting public should read this novel carefully.
You will be shocked by the tactics employed to get a novel up and going as the publishing machine takes over.
We are so pleased when Nathan Frey, penniless and unremarkable, has his first book sold for over a million pounds sterling. We are thrilled when poverty-stricken Lily Wright pens Mimi's Remedies and it catapults into the bestsellers lists. We sympathise as the journalists and columnists take an interest in her life, describe her small flat as a squat and turn a minor mugging story into the main point of an interview.
There is a love-hate relationship between the author and the media (and Keyes is probably writing from experience here).
Then there's television and the brutal truth that "only the good-looking authors get on telly. When an author is a dog, telly researchers won't book her. Sometimes the publishers try to keep her off the publicity trail. They tell the media she's a recluse." Keyes never tries to be clever. She just tells it like it is, using real people to tell their stories. And there isn't a gloss or a judgement.
We know that JoJo is having an affair with a married man and she feels guilty about it. We know that Lily pinched Gemma's fella, Anton, but she is adamant she is "not a seductress".
"To be honest, I'm the least fatale of femmes," she insists. Gemma, of course, has to take a large slice of the blame because she sent her then-friend to spy on Anton in the first place! But this gives us the two old enemies with the same publisher theme.
The novels within the novel grab the reader's attention, and Keyes, perhaps unintentionally, divulges quite a bit about her characters and how they come about. Lily indulges herself utterly when she sits down to create her protagonist, Mimi. "She was wise, kind, earthy and magical - a mix of several people: she had my mum's wisdom, Dad's generosity, Dad's second wife Viv's warmth and Heather Graham's hair:"
Similarly, Gemma creates the Izzy and Will story as an idealised version of what she would like to happen.
Of course, there are rejections along the way. Is this how Keyes felt when the manuscripts landed with a thump on the hall floor? "That's my book, I always said," laments Lily.
And then the excitement of acceptance: "I was out of my mind with the thrill of having got a publisher."
But Gemma is a one-book wonder, while Lily forges ahead - as Marian herself did. And her mum and dad?
Once the big fling is over, he goes home, "does the crossword and plays golf. She buys clothes and makes him guess the price. They watch murder mysteries and go for drives."
This seems to be the book where Marian sits back and analyses what has happened to her over the last decade. She examines the whirlwind of publication, film rights and fame, as well as the sheer hunger to get published.
I think she hasn't forgotten her own beginnings, the insecurity of that first novel, the author-signing session where she feared nobody would turn up - all the memories are there.
The Other Side of the Story is a great big book - over 600 pages - so you won't read it overnight. But it's a joy!