It is Maggie Walsh's backstory that sets Angels apart from other blockbusters. (After reading Marian Keyes' new Hollywood-based book, dropping the odd bit of movie terminology seems unavoidable!) Bernice Harrison found it highly entertaining
She's always been the sensible sister in the chaotic Walsh household. She married her childhood sweetheart, got a responsible job in a law firm and life seemed on an even, if predictable keel, in suburban Dublin. Then her marriage starts to fall apart, and when her husband has an affair, she hightails it off to Los Angeles, where her old friend Emily is trying to make it as a scriptwriter. Hell-bent on exploring what might have been, she sleeps with a charismatic film producer, flirts with lesbianism and gives herself a rigorous beauty makeover.
That's the chicklit part. But Keyes is too smart a writer to leave it at that. Her trademark style is to weave a serious issue in with the fluff, and in this, her sixth novel, it's Maggie's painful story (or backstory in moviespeak) of abortion and miscarriages that is slowly revealed as the book goes on and as Maggie come to terms with them.
Keyes is a rare writer in the popular fiction genre in that most of her characters are as strong as her plot lines and the dialogue sparkles and rings true. She's superb on female relationships; and in this book, the character of Emily, the ambitious scriptwriter hanging on by her manicured nails to the hope that she can make it in the movies, is particularly vivid.
Setting the book in Los Angeles is a bit like giving Keyes a shotgun and presenting her with fish in a barrel. It's a smug European cliché to be vastly superior to Tinseltown's preoccupation with beauty, money and celebrity, and the low-cal culture of LA is traditionally fertile ground for easy laughs, but Keyes restrains herself. She does poke fun, but it is in her usual good-natured style, so that when Kirsty, one of her new LA friends, earnestly explains that her nose job wasn't just for her - it was so that her future children wouldn't inherit a big nose - Keyes just leaves it where it falls without adding any bitchy asides.
There are some jarring notes. She has the Walsh family visit Maggie in LA. Once she gets them there, she doesn't seem to know what to do with them, and they sort of drift around providing the odd laugh. Only Mammy Walsh, who is hilariously adopted as a sort of shamen by the touchy-feely new agers next door, emerges as a fully-fledged character. Sometimes Maggie's wide-eyed innocence is a bit hard to take, given that she's already spent five years working in Chicago. And is after all 32, not 22.
That said, Angels is a fast, funny read that is a credible insight into the lives of thirtysomethings trying to brave the shark-infested waters of the movie business in LA, while at the same giving a sensitive insight into the disintegration of an ordinary Irish marriage. They sound like two very different stories, but Keyes weaves them together with a deft touch in this highly entertaining book.
Angels. By Marian Keyes. Poolbeg. 482 pp. €19.99
Bernice Harrison is an Irish Times columnist