Book Review: The Break
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this ever but I quite like that Marian Keyes one. By ‘quite like’ I may mean ‘worship the ground she walks on’, etc. Perhaps the most apt example I can give is this: before reading a (gorgeous!) advance copy of her new novel, I was rereading Rachel’s Holiday, a novel that has both entertained and sustained me for the better part of twenty years.
I cannot comment fairly on The Break just yet because I’ve only read it once. Once! How am I supposed to be fair to this baby novel when I haven’t read it at least ten times? How can I compare 40-something Amy to the 20-something Lucy Sullivan that I first read about in my early teens and have held close to my heart into my early thrties, or to any of the Walsh family, or to Lisa & Ashling & Clodagh or Katherine & Tara & Fintan or Grace & Marnie & Alicia & Lola?
How can I even be fair to it in relation to her most recent novel, The Woman Who Stole My Life, which I have read slightly fewer times than the others (maybe four or five or six?)?
Okay. So I have read this book once so far (there will be rereads, rest assured, and probably at least one before the actual publication date). And it’s gorgeous. It’s engrossing and funny and sharp and psychologically astute and all the things you might expect.
Amy is in her mid-forties, and is an unlikely but determined candidate to be working in PR. She splits her work-time between London and Dublin; the latter is where she lives with her second husband, Hugh, her two daughters, and a troubled niece. Dublin is also the hub for her family – a glorious tangle of grown-up siblings trying to be adults and supportive of one another but often not quite getting there.
When Hugh announces he wants a six-month break – an open marriage, effectively – Amy is horrified and angry and yet at the same time all too aware he needs some change in his life. In the past year, he’s lost both his father and a close friend and is struggling with his own mortality. But as the story progresses, we see that there’s been cracks in the marriage, too – that it’s been difficult for both Amy and Hugh to sustain their romance as real life intervenes.
At the same time, there’s family to consider – both the wider circle and the three young ‘uns they need to take care of. The social commentary here is as spot-on as ever, incorporating vlogger-fame, social-justice-speak, and the pared-back-to-the-bone horror of Irish reproductive law.
Amy is not just a mother/carer, though – she’s also struggling with her attraction to other men, and the appeal of the new and alluring (just as Hugh is). She’s slightly less kinky than Stella of The Woman Who Stole My Life, while still very much an unapologetically sexual woman. She’s rounded, is what she is – she’d probably take that to mean her figure (she’s gorgeous, we can deduce that even though she’s hard on herself) but it’s absolutely what her life is. She has a lot going on, this one.
I loved reading this. It was my treat to myself after several weeks’ of not being able to read properly, and oh it did not disappoint. The book is out in September, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have gobbled it all up a second time before then. Marian Keyes is one of our finest modern Irish writers, and I feel so, so lucky to have read this sneakily before its official publication date. Read this. Read all her books. She’s a rockstar.
