Every bubble in the galaxy has burst. The million shards of sparkle suspended in the air have turned to wet ash. All the colour has leached away and the world is just grey, grey, grey.
Amy O’Connell is a 44 year old mother of three daughters, married to Hugh. She loves him, but life is a dull and chaotic blur and while she realises that Hugh is struggling after the death of his father, she is blindsided when he tells her he wants to take a break from their relationship to go backpacking in Asia. He will not contact her, and though he promises he will be back in six months Amy understands that he’s unlikely to keep his promise.
I was pleasantly surprised by how complex this book was. I’d call it mature, but in a book about a 44 year old rediscovering herself that evokes images of Live Love Laugh signs and people who think Eat Pray Love is the apex of personal growth. I’d rather call it grown-up: the book strikes a balance between humorous (like the plot about Amy’s mother becoming an influencer slash brand ambassador for incontinence pads) and more serious topics. Amy grieves her relationship; she is angry with Hugh for leaving her with their three daughters, but she misses him terribly. There are other men, including one with whom Amy had an emotional affair once upon a time, and she does a lot of soul-searching. What seems like an exciting opportunity at first soon turns into something far more complex than she bargained for.
The plot is quite convoluted with a lot of sideplots. Some work; Amy’s three daughters – one from her relationship before Hugh, one informally adopted niece from a wayward brother – have their own foibles and Amy does an admirable job juggling their needs with her own. Other plots work less well, like Amy’s father slowly succumbing to dementia; it’s mostly played for laughs and while I get that treating every plot with the same gravitas would probably result in a novel far heavier than what it aims to be, it also makes the novel feel a little unbalanced.
In the end, though, it’s a fun novel with a plot that kept me guessing. Amy is a sympathetic character and there is more depth to the novel than I would have thought initially. Despite a couple of slight tonal missteps, it’s a good read for when you lack the mental bandwith for something heavy but want more than a forgettable beach read. I’d never heard of Marian Keyes before I read this book, but I’ll definitely be checking out her other work.
