The Mystery of Mercy Close (56 page)

Marian Keyes is one of the most successful Irish novelists of all time. Though she was brought up in a home where a lot of storytelling went on, it never occurred to her that she could write. Instead, she studied law and accountancy, and finally started writing short stories in 1993 ‘out of the blue’. Though she had no intention of ever writing a novel (‘It would take too long’) she sent her short stories to a publisher, with a letter saying she’d started work on a novel. The publisher replied, asking to see it, and once her panic had subsided she began to write what subsequently became her first book,
Watermelon.

It was published in Ireland in 1995, where it was an immediate, runaway success. Its chatty, conversational style and whimsical Irish humour appealed to all age groups, and this appeal spread to Britain when
Watermelon
was picked as a Fresh Talent book. Other countries followed (most notably the US in 1997), and Marian is now published in thirty-three languages.

To date, the woman who said she’d never write a novel has published eleven of them:
Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel’s Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for Beginners, Angels, The Other Side of the Story, Anybody Out There, This Charming Man
and
The Brightest Star in the Sky,
all bestsellers around the world.

Anybody Out There
won the British Book Award for popular fiction and the inaugural Melissa Nathan Prize for comedy romance.
This Charming Man
won the Irish Book Award for popular fiction and was the biggest-selling novel of 2009.

The books deal variously with modern ailments including addiction, depression, domestic violence, the glass ceiling and serious illness, but are always written with compassion, humour and hope.

As well as novels, Marian writes short stories and articles for magazines and other publications. She is also involved with various charities – she contributed to a multi-authored book,
Yeats is Dead!,
where all the royalties were donated to Amnesty International. She has published two collections of her journalism, titled
Under the Duvet
and
Further Under the Duvet,
and donated all royalties from Irish sales to the Simon Community, a charity which works with the homeless. More recently, Marian wrote a beginner’s baking book,
Saved by Cake,
which gave an extremely honest account of her battle with depression.

Marian was born in Limerick in 1963 and brought up in Gavan, Cork, Galway and Dublin; she spent her twenties in London, but is now living in Dún Laoghaire with her husband Tony. She includes among her hobbies: reading, movies, shoes, handbags and feminism.

Q: On average, how long does it take you to write a book?

A:
I’ll tell you how long! A couple of years ago on a book tour in Australia, I had the great privilege of sitting next to a woman at lunch who asked me how many books I ‘churned out’ a year. ‘Three?’ She suggested. ‘Four?’ ‘Oh God no,’ sez I. ‘Twelve. One a month. Only it doesn’t take me the whole month to churn it, it only takes about a week and I spend the other three weeks at a top-notch spa having lymphatic drainage on my thighs.’

No, sadly,
mes amis,
I said no such thing. I only thought of that fabulous reply several sleepless nights later. Nor did I enact scenario number two and tell her to ‘fuck off’. No, what I did was stammer apologetically that actually it took a full two years for me to ‘churn out’ a single book.

Q: Do you ever base your characters on real people?

A:
Christ alive, are you mad! No. No, no, no. That would be so cruel – and I’d end up with no friends. But that doesn’t stop people assuming that I’ve stuck them in a book. I was told a great story about an ex-boyfriend who, when he heard I’d written my first book, leapt up from the pub where he’d heard the news, abandoning his pint, ran down the street to the nearest bookshop, rattled the shut door and begged the security guard to let him in so that he could get his hands on the book because he was convinced I’d written all about him and his unusually small mickey. Which of course I hadn’t (his mickey wasn’t even that small, certainly no worse than average). But really, it’s far more fun to just make people up

Q: Do you have a particular method or approach to writing?

A:
I always start with a character and really work on them until I know them: as I said, they’re never based on real people but maybe have attributes of a number of different people. And I generally have a subject I’m thinking about – and then I put the two together. That sounds so simple, but it isn’t.

I used up my own life in the first three books (although they weren’t autobiographical), and I’ve had to do research since. I find research very difficult as I have to ask people impertinent questions, which makes me very uncomfortable.

I never have the whole book planned out – I feel I’d lose interest if I did.

Q: Who or what was your biggest influence in deciding to become a writer?

A:
I’m not sure I did decide to become a writer. I started writing short stories as an escape, and to entertain myself and my friends. I would have been terrified to call myself a writer – it was only a couple of years later when I gave up my day job that I realized that that was what I was. In terms of storytelling, my mother was a big influence; her family had a great oral storytelling tradition.

Q: Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?

A:
Keep backups. Also: firstly, stop talking about it and start writing it word by word. Formally set aside time to write – respect your book enough not to try to fit it in, in bitty gaps, around the rest of your life. Better still, try to write at the same time every day; this seems to trigger the subconscious into readiness.

Don’t be surprised if your first efforts are shockingly bad – indeed, expect to marvel at the gap between what you want to say in your head and how it appears on the page. But persevere: chances are it will improve.

Beware of setting yourself up as the ‘new’ Maeve Binchy or the ‘new’ someone else; it’s always cringingly obvious. Instead, write in your own unique voice and be proud of it.

Write what you know – and if you don’t know it, be prepared to research it.

Finally – enjoy it! If you enjoy writing it, chances are that people will enjoy reading it.

Q: What are your favourite books?

A:
I read quite widely, but thrillers are always a favourite. Sometimes I get fixated by writers – I had a spell when I read everything Alexander McCall Smith has written, and wondered how he would take it if I called round to his house and asked if I could move in, and live with him like a household pet. At the moment I’m mildly obsessed with Michael Connelly. I also had a Dennis Lehane spell. I’m also very fond of non-fiction, especially any accounts of those who have suffered ‘My drink and drugs hell’. The gorier the better.

I’m also trying to educate myself about – God, I’m not sure of the right word – feminism? ‘Women’s issues?’ Anyway, whatever it’s called, I’ve been trying to read seminal feminist books because my generation were never encouraged to do so – we were told that the battles of the sexes was over and we were all equal now. But I sort of couldn’t help noticing that women are still second-class citizens and, you know, it really annoyed me but I didn’t have the language to articulate how I felt, so I decided to educate myself in the subject.

Q: When you’re not writing, how do you pass the time with your family?

A:
Doing good works amongst the deserving poor.

Also, lying on the couch watching
Big Brother,
and if not available counting the days until it comes back.

Hanging around shoe shops.

Looking at
net-a-porter
on the Internet and complaining about the prices.

Wondering why my fingernails always split when they reach their optimum length.

Sometimes I make curries and buy socks.

There’s this woman I know from bridge, Mona Hopkins, a lovely woman she is, even if I must admit I’m not that keen on her myself, and she said a great thing the other day. I was expecting her to say, ‘Two no trumps,’ but instead she comes out with a saying about her children. She says, ‘Boys wreck your house and girls wreck your head.’ Isn’t that a marvellous bit of wisdom? ‘Boys wreck your house and girls wreck your head!’ And God knows it’s the truest thing I’ve heard in a long time. I should know. I have five girls. Five daughters. And let me tell you, my head is wrecked from them.

Although, now that I think of it, so is my house …

There’s Claire, my eldest. She was born to myself and Mr Walsh in 1966, the Swinging Sixties, although we had no truck with ‘swinging’ in Ireland and nobody minded one little bit. Why would we ‘swing’ when we had praying? Also we were after getting our very own Irish television station, RTÉ, so there was plenty to keep us occupied. Not that we knew what ‘swinging’ actually entailed – wearing short dresses and false eyelashes, we suspected. We were delighted with Claire, of course, although I suspect Mr Walsh would have preferred a boy. She was a high-spirited child, a cheeky imp, if you want the God’s honest truth, and I found her hard to handle, always with the backchat and the opinions. But if I’d known what I’d be getting further down the road with Helen, I’d have been on my knees every day, thanking God for my good little girl.

For a while it looked like Claire was going to do things my way – she went to university and got a degree, then she married an accountant. But then it all went ‘tits-up’. (Is it okay for me to say that? I never know which slang is acceptable for a woman of my age and station to use and which isn’t.) Yes, everything went ‘tits-up’ for Claire, because her husband left her the day she gave birth to their first child, but she’s a born survivor and she’ll tell you all about it herself in
Watermelon.

In 1969 Margaret came along, and I know a mother can’t have a favourite child, but if I
was
to have one, it would be Margaret. A good, good, good girl. Obedient, truthful, all of that. A small bit dull, if we’re to be completely frank, but no one is perfect. And I wouldn’t be mad on her ‘look’ – like, would it kill her to put on a lipstick, I sometimes think. The funny thing is that her ‘style icon’ is Kate Middleton, who is so highly groomed and ‘pulled-together’. I too am a great admirer of Kate Middleton – her hair is ‘stunning’ and I saw nothing wrong with those wedge espadrilles.

Margaret never caused me a moment’s worry. I thought I had that daughter parcelled away nicely, until, out of the blue, she left her lovely reliable husband, Garv, and ran away to Los Angeles – where her friend Emily lived – and got up to all kinds of high jinks, the half of which I do not know and do not
want
to know. (That’s a lie. I’d love to know it all. I hate when they don’t tell me things, but Helen says the shock would kill me. Anyway, the full story is in
Angels,
if you’re interested in finding out yourself.)