Published in 2008, and set in Ireland (Dublin and County Clare), this is by Marian Keyes. My audio-version was very nicely narrated by Caroline Lennon.

It's a chunky book (26 hours and 48 minutes of listening...). In fact, one of my criticisms is that it's possibly a little too long.

But the bottom line is that I enjoyed it. And it was an excellent book to listen to on a long flight, and during sustained bouts of cleaning. Ergo, it fitted perfectly with my recent activities.

The basic story is quickly told. We have a "charming man" (one Paddy de Courcy, budding politician), who, underneath that shiny, charismatic surface, is a monster... A master of disguise and manipulation, he turns out to be a serial abuser of women. He beguiles them, hurts them (physically and emotionally), and then somehow pressures them into silence.

We start with the announcement of his engagement to Alicia. We don't hear too much about her side of the story. But we hear extensively about three of de Courcy's other victims: Lola, who thought she was still his girlfriend, and whose life is sent into a tailspin by the sudden news that he has dumped her without so much as a conversation; Marnie, a young woman who still hasn't recovered from the damage de Courcy's wrecking-ball persona inflicted on her life several years ago (she now has a decent husband and two children, but she increasingly struggles with alcoholism); and Grace, Marnie's twin sister, a feisty journalist whom de Courcy seems to regard as his ultimate challenge, and who is dragged, almost against her will, into the vortex of his sinister charisma.

He gets his come-uppance, you'll be glad to hear, but not before he has left a trail of emotional destruction.



As I mentioned, I feel this could have been a slightly trimmer book. Marnie's narrative in particular starts to flag, as we (lengthily) follow the alcoholic's doom-laden path of denial and havoc.

While the accounts of Grace and Marnie adhere closely to their point of view, but are written in the third person, Lola's story is delivered in the first person, and written in diary form. According to Kirkus, such "narration hilariously parodies the article- and pronoun-challenged diary of Bridget Jones". I found this mode a little irritating (although after a while I too caught myself thinking in language free of articles...)

Nevertheless, ditsy fashion stylist Lola is a great character, and the humour her account generates helps to balance the women's heavy undeniable storylines. To recover from her Paddy experience, she withdraws to a seaside cabin in County Clare, where she starts off bored, but ends up striking up friendships with the disparate members of the local community.

Keyes is definitely engaging. She's often laugh-out-loud funny, and yet her book exposes a number of very real social problems. In This Charming Man, she deals not only with domestic violence and alcoholism, but with the difficulties of being a woman in politics; the cut-throat world of the tabloid press; the casual racism endured by immigrants; and the stigma associated with cross-dressing.

That last element was a pretty noble attempt to normalize a proclivity that many still consider bizarre and/or unhealthy. Keyes didn't totally get the details right, as she admits in her apology here. Nevertheless, her depiction of cross-dressers as rounded characters, who are fully capable of mature relationships, offers a great counterbalance to the caricatures we are often served up with.

Lola keeps referring to the little coterie of cross-dressers she inadvertently gathers around her as "trannies". This is incorrect, as another character points out. The following exchange illustrates both Lola's truncated style, and the point in question:

"'Where can I change?' he demanded, back to his man’s voice.
"Change?
"'Change into my dress.'
"Dress?
"'Yes, my dress!' Tapped his briefcase in exasperated fashion.
"Oh God. 'You have trannie clothes in briefcase?'
"'Cross-dressing, cross-dressing, I am sick telling you.'"

And it's true that the vocabulary here is a minefield... According to this source, "cross-dresser" replaced the word transvestite, which came to be deemed offensive. And, contrary to what Keyes maintains in the novel, cross-dressers can equally well be straight, bisexual, or gay.

What matters, though, is that Lola's journey from embarrassment and prejudice to compassion and acceptance is an interesting and instructive one. There's certainly a useful underlying point: The people who belong to groups that are routinely vilified -- cross-dressers, or migrant workers -- are shown to be genuinely good guys, while the truly anti-social figure, the one who is absolutely worthy of our vituperation, is also the one who enjoys all the power and social prestige.


It's possible that these illustrations, and their implied comparison with Paddy de Courcy, are unfair to crocodiles...

***

Part of the reason for embarking on a Keyes novel was the discussion between the author and Richard Osman that featured at the end of the audio-version of The Thursday Murder Club. Both authors have been on the receiving end of patronizing descriptors such as "the queen of chick-lit", or "the master of mainstream". But they shrug it off, says Lisa Allardice: "If there's any snub intended in these middlebrow monickers, publishing's royal couple couldn't give two hoots. 'Hilariously, it's meant as an insult,' Osman says. 'Like popular fiction is an insult,' adds Keyes."

The whole conversation is a reminder that it's unwise to eschew popular literature just because it IS popular: "From her first novel, Watermelon, in 1995, Keyes’s fiction, despite her chatty style, has dealt with difficult issues including addiction, divorce, depression, eating disorders and grief. Yet despite such a long writing career, her work hasn’t been given the same critical attention as male comic writers such as Nick Hornby or David Nicholls. 'Maybe if I was Martin Keyes my books would be regarded differently,' she told me in a previous interview. Over the years she has honed her answer to the inevitable question as to whether this bothers her: not any more (she’s sold more than 35m copies, after all), but there’s a bigger economic point to be made. 'Power and money are lovely. Men have a lot more of it than women. And they are going to protect it,' she says."

Osman admires Keyes, and credits her tone and brand of comedy for inspiration as he searched for his own novelistic voice. Admittedly, Osman also admires John Grisham (seriously?). But he continues very cogently: "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." Good advice...

Keyes certainly writes from the heart. She herself suffered from depression: "Even after she had come through 'the worst black bits', for a while she would feel 'a pang of envy' when she heard someone had died. 'I’m really not proud of that,' she says. 'It took a long time for that kind of re-embracing of life to happen, but it did happen.'" She was also an alcoholic, and her family packed her off to a rehab clinic after she tried to kill herself. This visceral life experience is surely what gives the book its heft.

And the social scenarios she illustrates, in her approachable and relatable manner, certainly deserve an airing. Domestic abuse is definitely a problem in Ireland, and a discussion of how insidiously it might start, and how cunningly it conceals itself from the rest of the world, is surely useful.

Aficionados of Keyes rate This Charming Man as one of her darker novels. But it still offers her trademark happy ending. She always writes them -- because, as she says, "you can't depend on real life to do it for you'..."



***

I sometimes don't get on with very popular writers. Anita Shreve or Kristin Hannah, for example, I doubt I'd bother with again, their astronomic sales notwithstanding.

Richard Osman is a big exception, of course. We've both read four of his Thursday Murder Club novels, and would happily read more.

And I'd read more Keyes, too. What she does, she does very well.