Holiday from Hell with therapy! (Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes)

Member Name: WelshTigergirl

Product:	Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes
Date:	22/02/04 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great thought provoking read, A great book to take on holiday

Disadvantages: A bit shallow at times, Slightly predictable

I have read quite a few of Marian Keyes books recently (something to do with the job lot I bagsied on eBay not long ago!) I have a very wide range of reading tastes from historical romance books to Shaun Hutson gore fests! I fancied a change and after the popularity of all the hype about Brigit Jones type thirty-something books, I thought I would give them a go. Rachel?s Holiday was the third Marian Keyes book I have read, and in my opinion one of her better ones.

The Characters

Obviously Rachel is the star turn in this book. Rachel Walsh is approaching thirty, living in New York, had a history of tragic failed romances and has finally found a boyfriend who she has been with a few months and that she actually likes. She is a bit of a fashion victim, well Ok a lot of a fashion victim. She had a council house upbringing in Ireland, with parents that she felt she could never please no matter how hard she tried. Her sisters were always better, smarter and higher achievers than she felt she ever could be, hence the move to America to escape them.

She lives with Brigit, also another Irish gal, in a small New York apartment, they party hard, drink hard and dabble in the odd bit of cocaine. Luke Costello, her boyfriend has always been a bit of an embarrassment to her by the clothes he wears and his hairstyle, even if there is a deep attraction there. Not exactly New York chic!

The Plot

The books starts off with Rachel telling us that she is accused of being a drug addict. One slight accidental overdose, and everyone believes that she?s a smack head! She is flown back home to Ireland to start a drug rehabilitation program in The Cloisters, Dublin?s version of The Betty Ford Clinic, on the insistence of her family. She finds the whole prospect quite exciting, and fully expects there to be at least 1 A list celebrity in there. Not to mention the sauna, swimming pool, gym and five star treatment she is expecting. She
is convinced that her folks are over reacting to a bit of recreational drug taking and that she will be back in New York before she knows it.

Marian tells the story in flashback format, starting with the overdose and slowly, over the course of the book telling of the events which lead up to it. This of course is all punctuated with life in The Cloisters, which is nothing like she imagined.

In The Cloisters she meets several eccentric characters, who are all in for various addictions. She has to share a room with Chaquie, an alcoholic who won?t stop talking and annoys Rachel to distraction. She sits in various therapy session and listens to everyone?s stories. Some of which fill her with horror and disgust. She denies that any of her behaviour could possibly have been that bad. And then Luke and Brigit come to one of her sessions, and fill in a few blanks which had been forgotten in a drug clouded fog and she comes to the realisation that she may have overdone things a little bit. She leans on Chris, a rather handsome drug addict himself and opens her heart to him, hoping for a little romance to alleviate the boredom.

Over the course of the treatment she goes through just about every emotion possible and faces some very uncomfortable truths about herself. She watches as all around her the other patients experience the same, and learns the series of emotions, which she will have to experience in order to become well.

The book deals with the sensitive issue of addiction very well, it handles the emotional issues which affect all friends and families of an addict with sensitivity and very believably. There are also some hysterically funny parts when I actually caught myself laughing out loud. But also makes the reader aware of how this could quite easily happen to someone like us, or someone we love.

The only real problem I have with this and indeed most Marian Keyes books is the fact that the leading ladies are
high flier independent type women who all come from Ireland and who all have alcoholic fathers and tyrannical mothers. They all flat share and all end up coming back to Ireland because of some woe or another.

The good points about her writing is that she has a wicked sense of humour and some of the banters between the characters are brilliantly written and utterly hilarious. She also has the gift of getting every 25+ woman to identify with the little frustrations in life as you get older.

All in all it?s a good book that I would recommend to anyone wanting a light hearted view of the world with a slightly different twist from all the Bridget Jones and Notting Hill romances that are about these days.

Summary: