Popular Fiction: Claire is a bored housewife with a difference. First of all, she's useless at housework; she doesn't have a people-carrier, getting around instead on a pink high-nelly bicycle, and she finds herself being downright rude to the other mothers at the school gate when she drops off four-year-old Lizzie.
After making love with her husband, James, she declares herself bored, bored, bored, so things aren't working too well in the relationship department either.
But a €20,000 Lotto windfall changes everything. She wants the three of them to head off to India for a year, but James, being a sensible husband, says "no". Instead Claire takes Lizzie on a long holiday to Greece. It's no ordinary trip, as she retraces her student steps to San Stefanos on the island of Mykonos, where there is unfinished business to attend to.
First, though, there's Ross, a dark and interesting Englishman, who draws her into a brief but satisfying affair. It doesn't look good for James, who has stayed at home, but there are a few nice twists in the plot that keeps any sense of happy-ever-after to the very last minute.
This is Cork woman Judi Curtin's second novel after the best-selling Sorry, Walter, and it's brisk and self-assured from start to finish. While the storyline is pure romance, the writing is sharp as lemons and you can't help but like the scatty but heartsick Claire. Don't be put off by the schmaltzy cover; it's a fun book that demands to be finished at one sitting.
The first page of Everyone's Got a Bono Story is the most engaging in the book:
You've got one, haven't you? A Bono story. Go on, think about it: you might not even realise it, but somewhere, buried away in the dark recesses of your mind, it's there. You know how they go . . .
And then on come the Bono stories - the sort of brief encounters that show he's no match for the rest of the lads down the pub. Can't sing, loves himself, what's he doing with the shades on all the time, and all the rest of it.
Well, one person who hasn't got a Bono story is Aoife Collins, and not only that but she's just lost her job in a dot.com company and has to move out of her flat because the greedy landlord wants to sell. This is Dublin in 2000 and Aoife thinks the place has been totally ruined by social climbers and wannabes.
Still, she does have her stereotypical gay friend Rory and, as he's rich, he's offered to put her up and make a bet with her. If she manages to meet Bono before the month is out he will give her €5,000. This would be any sane person's cue to stop reading, but the reviewer has to bash on regardless.
Aoife keeps missing the star in various locations, but she does find love in the form of Paul, confusion when it turns out he may be married, and happiness when it turns out he is not. That was his sister he was kissing. And not only does she meet Bono but she gets to sit next to him and, meanwhile, a whole new career opens up as a dress designer.
All this, and lots of Father Jack-style bad language into the bargain make Everyone's got a Bono Story a very tiresome read.
• Orna Mulcahy is an Irish Times journalist
