Popular Fiction: You can't help suspecting as you read Cecelia Ahern's third novel that she was imagining the resulting movie even as she was tapping out this tale of an "imaginary" friend who comes to life in a sleepy Co Kerry town, writes Róisín Ingle
The best-selling author has talked in interviews about how she'd like one day to write for film and already two of her books including this one are set for the big screen.
So it's difficult, as you read about the goings on in Baile na gCroithe (Town of the Hearts), not to picture someone like, say, Anna Friel in the role of 34-year-old Elizabeth Egan the obsessively organised interior decorator who's finding it hard to cope as her nephew starts claiming he has a friend called Ivan. A friend that nobody else is able to see. Six-year-old Luke has long since been abandoned by his feckless, reckless twentysomething mother Saoirse, Elizabeth's younger sister. Her character - free-spirited and flame haired - has Lindsay Lohan's name written all over it by the way. When Luke was born Elizabeth, a compulsive cleaner and coffee addict, was left holding her sister's baby and the parental role is one she struggles with daily having been provided with dubious role models herself in that department.
Among other quirks, Sam's invisible friend Ivan - the name of Hugh Jackman has already been put forward for the role - likes speaking backwards, telling Luke he comes from a place called Ekam Eveileb. Things he doesn't like are gnirob and things he does such as ice-cream and hugging are his "absolute favourites".
When Elizabeth begins to see Ivan herself she can't help falling for this intriguing, charming (in this reviewer's opinion sometimes downright irritating) character who is on a mission to remind gnirob dlo Elizabeth how to have fun.
A contemporary fairytale, this book is based on the premise that "imaginary" friends are not actually imaginary, merely magical people whom those with closed minds can't see.
It's a clever idea if vaguely reminiscent of movies such as Drop Dead Fred where Rik Mayall played a memorably manic imaginary friend. Ahern has done her research on the phenomenon and turned the concept on its head taking us behind the scenes to look at those who might work in the "imaginary" friend industry. Ivan is part of a magical group of people charged with befriending the lonely and disaffected, whether adults or children.
His boss is a character called Opal who wears flowing purple robes, purple tinted spectacles and daisies in her dreadlocked hair. It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to guess that Ahern might have pictured Whoopi Goldberg in that particular role.
This quirky novel shows that Ahern's writing has improved, it's markedly more assured here than in her other two books. These characters are also less one-dimensional and the story itself has more depth. In parts this book reads like a children's story and while that may put some people off it's this very innocence and warmth that is the key to Ahern's success.
With the publication of If You Could See Me Now the cynics will continue to wonder at the Cecelia Ahern phenomenon and the fans will continue to lap it up. There is nothing yranigami about this young writers appeal.
Róisín Ingle is an Irish Times journalist. Her book, Pieces of Me, a collection of her Irish Times Magazine columns, has just been published by Hodder Headline Ireland
If You Could See Me Now. By Cecelia Ahern, Harper Collins, 330 pp. £10.99