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When Gemma, a professional event planner, learns that her father has bolted and moved in with the much younger Colette, she channels her anger, hurt and confusion into long emails to her friend Susan in Seattle while entering into a ridiculous relationship with a younger man, Owen.
Susan sends Gemma's email rants to JoJo, a literary agent at Lipman Haigh in London. JoJo has her own episode of anger, hurt and confusion going on with the opposite sex since she's having an intense affair with a married superior in her agency.
Meanwhile, JoJo represents Lily, author of the bestselling fairy tale Mimi's Remedies and live-in girlfriend of Gemma's ex-boyfriend Anton (whom she feels guilty of stealing). When Lily learns that JoJo wants to represent a book based on Gemma's emails, she fears that her own fairy tale (flawed though it may be) with Anton may come to an end.
There you have it --- three women, three different lives, three separate problems with men, all combined into one novel. Keyes has written her most ambitious book to date, and while there are a few glitches (more on those in a moment), overall she succeeds in not only creating a new, engaging read, but in growing as a writer.
Before discussing the plot further, it's important to underscore that point: she's growing as a writer. First, when it comes to stretching as writers, so many novelists seem to prefer not to, in a Barleby-esque way. Second, Keyes could easily subscribe to that viewpoint because her books are immensely successful. But she's deliberately chosen to take a risk here.
The risk, of course, is not in trying to give each woman's story proper weight individually --- that could be accomplished by publishing three novellas. The trick is in meshing those three stories and making it mean something. Initially, as Keyes switches to JoJo just as we've become attached to Gemma, reader attention wavers --- but only for a moment, as JoJo may be Keyes's most fascinating character (in fact, Keyes has said that JoJo was the character she was originally planning to write a novel about): a voluptuous, brash, American-born girl who is nonetheless a stunning, successful English businesswoman.
It would have been so easy, too, to simply have paired each woman's story with the flip side: Gemma's father's girlfriend Colette's perspective, or JoJo's boyfriend's wife's story, or Lily-versus-Gemma in the fight for Anton's heart. Instead, Keyes shows that nearly anyone's story is the flip of someone else's --- and that no one, but no one, can predict the outcome of someone else's narrative nor can they influence it. Try as Gemma may, her version of a happy ending isn't the same as her mother's, any more than Anton's vision of domestic bliss in the perfect house is the opposite of Lily's.
One fascinating thread that does unite all three stories is the publishing industry. Keyes gives a realistic and decidedly unromantic view (OK, there's a teensy bit of fantasy here, but this is a Chick Lit novel. . .) of what goes on behind the scenes --- not just on the business end, but also on the frustrated writer's end. Lily's attempts to break out of the mold her publisher has cast for her ring oh-so-true. Thank goodness Avon Trade has not forced Marian Keyes to sing in a gilded cage, but is allowing her to spread her wings a bit. Fans, buy this book immediately. Those unfamiliar with Marian Keyes, pick it up and give it a try --- you might be hooked.
--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
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