A Healthy Mix of Sweet and Sour (Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes)

Member Name: venice105

Product:	Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes
Date:	08/02/09 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Involving characters, satisfying storytelling

Disadvantages: Slightly more taxing than some chick lit

Sushi For Beginners is the first book by Marian Keyes that I have read. I am a bit funny about "chick lit" (God someone please invent another moniker) - I will happily read anything that is moderately well written, but if I sense it is trying to sucker punch me with things like deep thought I find it a turn off. For instance, I recently read a book by Fay Weldon. Never having read Weldon either, I was lulled into a false sense of security by the frilly pink cover, only to end up reading a rather disturbing treatise on modern feminism with an ending as harrowing in its own way as Rosemary's Baby. This angered me. I do not like being tricked into deep contemplation. It's like sitting down to a frothy rom-com only to find it's actually a documentary about Rwanda. Am I concerned with deeper issues, yes of course, but escapist, relatively vapid literature is there for a reason. Sophie Kinsella and Helen Fielding are in my opinion excellent at the art.

And so in the back of my mind I had avoided Marian Keyes. I didn't have a strong reason why, truly not having one idea about her books, but I sensed they were slightly more taxing than your average fun foray. But a friend lent me a few books, and this was one of them.

Initially this book started off strangely. It had elements of the genre, yes, but from the get go there were some very strong characterisations that made the book stand out as something slightly elevated from the usual froth. There are two central female characters, one being a bit of a dormouse (Ashling), the other a bit of a b-word (Lisa). The writing did grab my attention quite quickly. I didn't float brainlessly into it, which to be honest initially I was a bit perturbed by. I had to concentrate as there was quite a bit going on with several peripheral characters. So I was slow to get into it. I was tired of being taken advantage of by these women posing as chick lit authors, how dare they keep making me use my brain?! But within about 50 pages, I realised that while perhaps more sophisticated in style and treatment of social issues, Marian Keye's writing is also very entertaining.

As I mentioned there are two central female characters, and as the book progresses while both maintain voices (as well as Ashling's best friend Clodagh), I would say that Ashling is the central character of the piece who connects everyone together. Ashling is a low level admin worker at a frumpy magazine in Dublin who gets what she think will be a glamorous new job at a new high end magazine being edited by Lisa, a Londoner who has basically been shunted into the position, much to her dismay. Their boss is Jack, a grumpy yet of course exceedingly attractive man.

Ashling's personal and professional life are given pretty equal attention, we are introduced to her two best friends who supply some humour to the mix. Ashling is not charmingly comical like Bridget Jones, but she does have a few quirks that elevate her shy, compliant character, and as the story progresses her confidence grows in a believable way. The reader sees that she is making mistakes romantically but Keyes holds back enough to spring a few surprises along the way.

Lisa is quite unsympathetic in her ill treatment of everyone around her, and yet slowly her fish out of water story does reveal there is more to her than meets the eye. All of the character's family backgrounds are addressed and largely attributed to them becoming the people they have, as well as allowing them to realise the changes they need to make to improve their lives.

The two women are of course in complete contrast to one another, but Keyes keeps the mix interesting by throwing in a few twists in unexpected places. The romance is kept light and bubbly in Ashling's case, with her having a few diversions from what is fairly obviously her fate - still, Keyes suspends this long enough to make it thoroughly satisfying. These characters have to endure real heartache to get their happy endings, and not all of them do. The grounding of this book is very steady - Lisa's ongoing divorce is treated with great subtlety I thought, we see the character going down roads that are obviously leading nowhere but lend the book further depth.

At five hundred pages long it is a wee bit on the hefty side I thought. Perhaps a few little things here and there could have been left out to make it a bit breezier to read. That said, once I got into it it was hard to put down. There were a few hokey sub plots, but given the relative darkness of some aspects of the book I did think they gave it a feel good factor that it might have suffered without. The storyline of getting the magazine up and running keeps the book ticking along nicely, I thought Keyes did a particularly good job of portraying both the work and play aspects of the character's lives. Her portrait of Dublin was a nice backdrop for things as well.

Also, having never read Keyes before I was a tiny bit jarred at her relatively risqué take on sex scenes for the genre. While not exactly Harold Robbins, they are far earthier than some and the grand finale so to speak was by far the most explicit of the lot! It didn't bother me, they were well done in their way, it was just a tiny bit over the top for me if I'm honest in this sort of book. Obviously Keyes is a writer who, while falling into a certain genre, also strays outside the boundaries of what is expected of her.

At any rate, I really enjoyed the multi-layered character interactions in this book and the surprise twists enough to certainly head for Marian Keyes the next time I pass a bookshelf. She is a very compelling and sympathetic writer in a sea of often bland chick lit. I know it won't be complete candy floss, but it will be fun nonetheless!

Summary: Enjoyable Irish yarn