There aren’t many novelists whose handling of dark subjects such as addiction and depression can leave you feeling compassion and empathy one minute and have you chuckling the next.
That is the genius of Irish writer Marian Keyes. There’s light and dark in all her novels, equal measures of hilarity and heartbreak. And Keyes’ latest book sees her back in the thick of the subjects she knows so well – addiction, rehab, relationships and family.
Keyes vowed she’d never write a sequel to her bestselling novel, Rachel’s Holiday. It centered on the eponymous heroine, a cocaine addict whose family pays for her to go to the Cloisters, Dublin’s answer to the Betty Ford Clinic, which she claims she’s only agreed to as it’s time to have a holiday.
“Back then, addiction was regarded as very shameful in a woman that should be kept secret,” says the bubbly novelist, who made her own alcoholism public when her writing career took off in the mid-’90s.
“I was so naïve. And so grateful I was no longer in the prison of addiction. I never felt it was something to be ashamed of. It meant that when people read the book, they were able to be more compassionate with themselves.
“So many people have contacted me to say they’ve got clean or sober from reading it, they stopped thinking of it as a moral failing and began to see it as it is, which is a condition that the person has no control over.
“Maybe a lot of people were shocked, but I never shocked myself.”
© Press Association ImagesA quarter of a decade on, recovering addict Rachel Walsh is back, in the sequel Again, Rachel, which finds her older and cleaner, working as an addiction therapist in the Cloisters, with a boyfriend, family and an enduring fondness for expensive trainers.
All is rosy, until her handsome ex-husband Luke arrives from America after his mother dies, and makes contact, upsetting the equilibrium of Rachel’s life.
There have been no such romantic complications for Keyes, who celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary to Tony Baines in 2020. They met at his 30th birthday party when Keyes was mired in alcoholism. When she got out of rehab, they began seeing each other, initially as friends, but got engaged 11 months later.
He worked in IT and was the type of nice, kind man she’d avoided during her wild booze-filled years, but who has clearly given her the support and stability she so needed.
There’s a big reveal in the latest book yet a particularly bleak event which might have you reaching for the tissues is tempered with Keyes’ trademark humour in other aspects of Rachel’s life, as she deals with, her loves past and present and an eclectic mix of patients.
The attitude to addiction now has changed since Keyes wrote Rachel’s Holiday, she agrees.
She said: “As a recovering addict, addiction is mainstream. It’s not something that happens on the margins of life. The numbers of people addicted to alcohol, gambling, tablets, illegal drugs, food, whatever, there’s an awful lot of it.”
Unlike fellow authors David Nicholls and Jo Jo Moyes, Keyes’ work has not been adapted for the big screen.
“It’s never really happened. I knew that if I started getting excited about it, I’d end up disappointed. And I was right. All I can do is write my books and whatever happens happens.”
Marian Keyes – Again, Rachel, Michael Joseph, £20
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