Last Chance Saloon: A Novel - Hardcover

Keyes, Marian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688180728 ISBN 13: 9780688180720

Publisher: William Morrow, 2001

Synopsis

No writer can tell a hilarious and moving story about the great truths of love, life, and friendship quite like Marian Keyes. Each of her internationally bestselling novels introduced a heroine so real, she felt like a long-lost friend. Now Keyes delivers her best novel yet....

Lost Chance
Saloon

Tara, Katherine, and Fintan have been friends since the days when leg warmers were cool. All through their twenties they shared their joys, heartbreaks, and endless giddy nights out. But now they've graduated to their slightly more serious thirties -- and only Fintan has what can honestly be called a "love life."

Tara struggles daily with her eternal diet -- and lies to herself about Thomas, her lowlife boyfriend. He keeps his change in a little-old-lady's purse and wouldn't pay a compliment if there was a cash award attached to it. But when you're in your early thirties and comfortably seated in the "last chance saloon," sometimes a dubious man seems safer than no man at all.

Katherine, on the other hand, feels that the safest relationship is the one she has with her TV remote control. She wants no surprises and keeps her life as ordered as her drawer full of matching bra-and-panty sets, even when the guys at work start calling her the Ice Queen.

But it's always when you are least ready for change that life insists on one. Fate is about to throw a curve ball that will lead Fintan to extract a very serious promise from his two best friends. And when catastrophe inevitably follows crisis, everyone's fife is sure to change in unexpected ways ... and not necessarily for the worse.

About this title

Review

Desperately single thirtysomething men and women populate Keyes's breezy novel. Childhood friends Tara, Katherine, and Fintan muddle along, dealing with the indignities and inconveniences we all face--and then some. Tara's perfectly horrible, freeloading boyfriend Thomas watches her diet like a hawk and remarks cruelly on the size of her posterior, comparing her unfavorably to younger, thinner women. Katherine is a professional success, but her personal life is nonexistent. Every one of her prior relationships--six in all--has ended disastrously, with Katherine getting dumped. Each time, she retreats further and further into her shell, until her most intimate relationship is with her remote control. Fashion industry insider Fintan has found true love with his Italian boyfriend, Sandro, but a health crisis threatens their happiness. Tara, Katherine, and Fintan, as well as their quirky cast of friends (people with names like Lorcan and Mandii), live, love, and learn the hard way, the only way they can. Not quite as obsessive as Bridget Jones and that damn diary of hers, Keyes manages to convey a painfully accurate portrayal of what it means to be single today, tempered by a few of life's less humiliating and more important lessons, like the value of true friendship. Funny and irreverent, Keyes's Last Chance Saloon is a terrific vacation read. --Alison Trinkle

About the Author

Marian Keyes is the author of ten bestselling novels and two essay collections. She lives in Ireland with her husband and their two imaginary dogs.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0688180728
• ISBN 13: 9780688180720
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384