Fiction:Sometimes it can seem like every mass-market novel aimed at women is following the same tired formula. Take three Very Different Women (there's usually a blonde, a redhead and a brunette, which is what passes for "very different" in this sort of book) who, despite their differences, somehow forge a friendship that lasts for decades, writes Anna Carey.
Introduce a few shocking secrets from the past that threaten to destroy everything. And then show how female friendship always stands the test of time. The characters usually meet at a favourite cafe, or live on a suitably quirky street. Someone's husband is always having an affair. There are always lots of tears, white wine, and hugs. There are no witty jokes, as the characters are all utterly humourless. It's all very boring.
At first glance, Catherine Dunne's new novel looks like yet another one of those books. It's got the generic cover (photo of a random youngish woman sitting in the sun, writing in a journal) and the even more generic tagline above the title ("How well do you know your best friend?"). But there's more to At a Time Like This than meets the eye. Yes, it's a book about four very different women who meet at an early age and whose friendship lasts for decades. And yes, there are affairs and shocking secrets. But it's also smarter, more complex and more elegantly written than the vast majority of its bland peers.
When Claire arrives at Trinity from the depths of rural Clare in the early 1980s, she meets Georgie and Maggie, childhood friends from the south Dublin suburbs who initially dazzle and then befriend the insecure country girl. The trio are joined by the socially awkward Nora, dubbed "Helicopter" by the callous Georgie because of her tendency to hover awkwardly around other people's conversations.
Claire moves in to a Rathmines flat with the two glamorous Dubliners, and falls in love with Maggie's brother Paul, a relationship that will dominate the rest of her life. As the action moves back and forth between the present and various points in the past, we see Maggie get together with Ray, a manipulative womaniser whom she nevertheless later marries. Nora drops out of college when she meets and marries Frank, a shoe salesman who is, in the opinion of the other girls, unbearably dull. And Georgie . . . well, when we meet Georgie, at the start of the book, she's on her way to her Italian bolthole to meet a mysterious secret lover, leaving her unsuspecting husband and daughters behind.
The day Georgie jets off to Tuscany, the four women are due to meet up for one of their regular get-togethers. But gradually the friends realise that Georgie's not going to turn up this week - or ever again. And her disappearing act has, once again, stolen the spotlight from the unfortunate Nora, who has a few secrets of her own.
Dunne tells the story through the voices of all four women, skilfully moving from one narrator to another. We get to see each character clearly through the eyes of the others, an effective device that deepens our understanding of and, in the case of Nora, our sympathy for the characters. There are times, usually in Georgie's narrative, when Dunne's writing can seem slightly forced and stilted. But for most of the book her elegant, lucid prose carries the story along smoothly.
"Have you any idea how many possible combinations of friendship there are among three articulate, competitive, complex women?" asks Georgie. Well, lots of bad novelists have been trying to figure out the answer to that question for years. But At A Time Like This is one of the very few books to do so with depth, intelligence, and a few surprises.
Anna Carey is an assistant editor at The Gloss magazine
At a Time Like This, By Catherine Dunne, Macmillan, 269pp. £11.99