Sex and the City by Way of Ballykissangel

Ever since Carrie Bradshaw donned those Manolo Blahniks in Sex and the City and Renee Zellweger put on forty pounds to play Bridget Jones, women everywhere have been going into their local book shops and reaching for this sort of fiction. `Chick Lit' fiction has become a phenomenon, selling more copies than any other genre and Marian Keyes is one of its most prolific and bestselling authors. Keyes has written nearly a dozen books and seems to have gained tremendous praise from lovers of all things `Chick Lit'. I, personally am not really a fan of this genre, (I like at least a couple of murders or some black humour in anything I read) however, after seeing Keyes, being extremely witty, in a few interviews, I decided to give one of her books a go. I chose Anybody Out There? - Marian Keye's latest.


The book tells the tale of an Irish woman, Anna Walsh, living in New York, she has the perfect job, the perfect husband, and is living in one of the most fast moving and exciting cities in the world. What more could a girl ask for? Life is grand, however, as the story progresses, the reader soon realises that something is very, very wrong.


As the story begins, Anna is back in Ireland, far away from her wonderful life, her perfect husband seems to have disappeared and she has been horribly scarred. As to why she is scarred or how she has ended up back in Ireland is a mystery which is revealed slowly and intriguingly throughout the book. As Anna recuperates in Ireland we are reintroduced to the Walsh family, a family that Keyes fans will have come to know well. Readers get to know Helen, the youngest of the Walsh Clan, she is a private detective and spends most of her time hiding in bushes trying to catch cheating spouses with her long range camera lens. Also Mother Walsh, whose concern for all her daughters is sometimes only fuelled by what other people may think of them. A typical Irish mother!


When Anna returns to New York, in search of her missing husband and against her mother's wishes, we meet a whole host of other characters, including Nicholas, a conspiracy theory nut, who believes everything from Alien Abductions to the fact that Elvis is alive and working in Taco Bell! All of these characters bring the book alive and help you to laugh through what is at times a heart breaking story.


`Anybody Out There?' is a good read, with elements of humour tragedy and indeed mystery. It has a few short comings, when the great mystery is revealed to the reader it seems to lose pace and any story about young single women set in New York will always be compared to Sex and the City. And when doing a straight comparison `Anybody Out there?' falls a little bit short. As a light summer read it is perfect, definitely a must if you need to read something while sitting beside the pool, sipping a glass of wine in Spain.
I would advise anyone who likes this sort of fiction to certainly read it. I would not say it has converted me to become a fan of `Chick Lit' fiction but it certainly has made me consider, after I have read few more juicy murder stories to try another one of these types of stories.