Angels - Hardcover

Marian Keyes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 071814466X ISBN 13: 9780718144661

Publisher: Michael Joseph Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

Maggie Walsh is supposed to be the sensible one - the white sheep of the family. She lives less than a mile from Mum and Dad and married middle-of-the-road Garv. But that is about to change . . . 'I'd always lived a fairly blameless life . . . up until the day I left my husband and ran away to Hollywood . . .' Unlike the rest of her family, Maggie Walsh has always done everything right. At thirty-three she has a proper job, is happily married to Garv and never puts a foot wrong. So why does she make a bolt for Hollywood and her best friend, Emily? In the City of Angels, Maggie gets to do things shes's never done before: mixing with filmstars, pitching scripts, partying non-stop. But is this really a once-in-a-lifetime journey of self-discovery, or is she simply running away from married life? 'Funny, compassionate, well-observed and irreverent' Time Out 'Keyes writes brilliantly, as always, about love, grief, jealousy and friendship' Daily Mail 'Witty, wicked and yet moving. A novel to both laugh and cry over' Ireland on Sunday

About this title

About the Author:

Marian Keyes is the international bestselling author of 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, The Brightest Star in the Sky, The Mystery of Mercy Close and The Woman Who Stole My Life. Her journalism, collected under two titles, Making It Up As I Go Along and Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition, containing the original publications Under the Duvet and Further Under the Duvet, are also available from Penguin. Marian lives in Dublin with her husband.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Michael Joseph Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 071814466X
• ISBN 13: 9780718144661
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496