From Publishers Weekly
Thirty-three-year-old Brit Margaret ("Maggie") Walsh is going through a "bad patch": she's drunk her contact lenses for "the third time in six weeks"; she's lost her job; and her nine-year marriage to Garv is over. Thus begins Keyes's enormously entertaining fifth novel. She resurrects the "maintenance-level dysfunctional" Walsh family: sisters Claire (Watermelon), Rachel (Rachel's Holiday), Helen and Anna, plus a befuddled dad and hyper-as-a-hummingbird mum. Maggie, however, is the "good" sister, so it is especially shameful when she must slink back home. She tends to the "mourning sickness" over her failed marriage, which Keyes describes with surprising depth and verisimilitude, and begins fantasizing about what might have been with her first love, Shay Delaney. Accepting an invitation from her best friend, Emily, a struggling screenwriter, Maggie visits L.A., the mecca of reinvention. She decides to trade in her "plain yogurt" persona for that of bad girl and takes an oft-bumpy walk on the wild side, with results that are riotously and embarrassingly silly. Amid her drunken nights and poor flirting choices, she throws herself into the glittering cesspool of La-la-land: acting as Emily's assistant, she witnesses the superficial frivolity and vicious fickleness of the entertainment business. Keyes's observations may be familiar (on aura reading, fake boobs, sadistic eyebrow groomers, the dependence of social status on cars), but her cleverly hilarious approach, especially as a foreigner, keep them fresh. Although this is unquestionably a fun read, Keyes refrains from turning it into fluff and delivers a well-rounded story. Her themes of love and redemption coupled with her familiar, best-friend tone have made her wildly popular in the U.K. and, like her latest novel, should ensure her a Hollywood ending in the U.S. as well.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
There are many ways to respond to losing your job and seeing your marriage dissolve. Fleeing into the fantasies and neuroses of Hollywood may not be the sanest choice, but when a screenwriter friend offers her a home, Maggie Garvin packs her bags and trades Dublin for Los Angeles. The result is another entry in the Bridget Jones line of young women finding their way through life. As with her other popular novels, including Last Chance Saloon and Rachel's Holiday, Keyes provides more than just quick laughs. There is plenty of wit in the roller coaster of emotions and in Maggie's learning to navigate the hype and hysteria of the film world not to mention protecting the innocents of Hollywood from her screwball family as they turn tourist. But there is also compassionate treatment of the anguish of miscarriage and how sorrow can separate a couple. Recommended for all public libraries. Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
de Marian Keyes
