Watermelon: The riotously funny and tender novel from the million-copy bestseller (Walsh Family)

£4.995
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Watermelon: The riotously funny and tender novel from the million-copy bestseller (Walsh Family)

Watermelon: The riotously funny and tender novel from the million-copy bestseller (Walsh Family)

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February the fifteenth is a very special day for me. It is the day I gave birth to my first child. It is also the day my husband left me. As he was present at the birth I can only assume the two events weren’t entirely unrelated. When he left the restaurant that first night, with his three cronies, a blur of briefcases and umbrellas and rolled-up copies of the Financial Times and sombre-looking suits, he smiled goodbye at me, and (well, I say this with the benefit of hindsight. It’s very easy to foretell the future when it’s already happened, if you know what I mean) I knew I was looking at my destiny.

And for years afterwards, long after the initial magic had worn off and most of our conversations were about insurance policies and Lenor and dry rot, all I had to do was remember that smile and I felt as if I had just fallen in love all over again. Yes, Claire gets annoying at times. Don't we all? And aren't most poeple who go through big breakups kind of selfish and self-centered? The fact is, Claire is a very real person. She has her flaws and faults, but the reader grows to care about her. I knew then that life was no respecter of circumstance. The force that flings disasters at us doesn’t say ‘Well, I won’t give her that lump in her breast for another year. Best to let her recover from the death of her mother first’. It just goes right on ahead and does whatever it feels like, whenever it feels like it. Now, I should tell you here that there were no car chases in any of the books we were talking about. They were serious profound books about life and death and similar matters. Let me just give you the briefest outline of myself and I’ll save details like, for example, my first day at school until later, if we have the time.

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

MY THOUGHTS: I have had a love/hate relationship with the Walsh family series. I loved Watermelon; my sides ached from laughing when I first read it, and then read it again regularly over the years. I detested Rachel's Holiday. Just. Did. Not. Like. It. One. Little. Bit. I had high hopes for Angels, #3 in the series. Loved the beginning, but our relationship went downhill from there, and even though the ending was almost decent, by then I was over it. I know that there’s no good time to tell you something like this. I couldn’t tell you when you were pregnant, in case you lost the baby. So I have to tell you now.’ Take John Grisham, says Osman. He may not have the prose style of Julian Barnes “but no one else writes a John Grisham book as well as John Grisham. You have to be the best person at writing the type of book you write. My view is – make mainstream things as well as you possibly can. Make it better than people think it is going to be.” For the record, the contemporary novel he thinks pulls off great storytelling and stylish prose is Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill – “best book of the century”. Because I promised,’ he said, shaking my hand off his arm and not meeting my eyes, looking like a chastised schoolboy. Suddenly the people at this table stopped being mere irritants and took on some sort of identity for me.

Keyes became known for her novels Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, Rachel's Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Anybody Out There, and This Charming Man, which, although written in a light and humorous style, cover themes including alcoholism, depression, addiction, cancer, bereavement, and domestic violence. [1] More than 35 million copies of her novels have been sold, and her works have been translated into 33 languages. [2] Her writing has won both the Irish Popular Fiction Book and the Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year, each on one occasion, at the Irish Book Awards. Which is something I should have done when I was an irresponsible student. But I was too busy getting work experience in my Summer holidays then, so my irresponsibility just had to wait until I was good and ready for it. Publishes fiction debut The Thursday Murder Club, currently being adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Entertainment. I’m sorry, but I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure that you’re taken care of financially and we’ll sort something out about the flat and the mortgage and all that, but I have to go.’ And not even very famous pop-stars, to add insult to injury. I had been working there about six months the night I met James. It was a Friday night, which was traditionally the night the OJs frequented our restaurant. OJ standing, of course, for Office Jerks.

Multibuys

Marian Keyes is a brilliant writer. No one is better at making terrifically funny jokes while telling such important, perceptive and agonizing stories of the heart. She is a genius' Sali Hughes I’d known that James was miserable for most of the time that I was pregnant, but I had put that down to my mood­ swings, my constant hunger, my raging sentimentality, where I cried at everything from Little House On the Prairie to The Money Programme.

I woke up to find James standing over me, staring down at me, his eyes very green in his white face. I smiled up at him sleepily and triumphantly. ‘Hello darling,’ I grinned. Brenda Wright celebrated her 80th birthday recently and came up to London to visit her sons. “She said: ‘I will turn up at 12 and I will be leaving at 4.30. All I want is a Chinese takeaway.’” Which is exactly what happened.

Publication Order of Binnie Kirshenbaum Short Story Collections

I do think there's often a tendency in books of this time and nature to make the men in the story extremely stupid, and I don't think Watermelon was any different but the way gaslighting and manipulative relationships are portrayed in this book - before the term gaslighting was even really used a lot - were so interesting to see. I was practically screaming when Claire was allowing James to convince her everything was her fault.



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