Skip to main content

Funny Book, Funny Author

Fav author: Marian Keyes

Just bought this novel by Irish author Keyes called "the other side of the story". read all her other novels, they are fan-tas-tic. hilarious, but not slap-stick, with characters i can easily identify with i.e. dysfunctional protaganists, or rather protaganists with dysfunctional lives. haha.

The first part talks about 32-year old Gemma Hogan. She's the only child and her aged parents' marriage has broken up. Her dad, Noel Hogan hooked up with Collete, his PA who's 4 years older than Gemma, with 2 kids from a previous relationship, and left home one Tuesday morning. Thence, Gemma has had to live with her Mam Maureen, to placate Maureen's panic attacks, which she often mistakens to be heart attacks. Gemma finds that she's not let out of the house other than to work and to the chemist to get Maureen's tranqs and sleeping pills. Maureen even refuses to change out of the dressing gown she wore on the morning Noel left, and keeps his porridge bowl (with the leftovers still intact, as if preserving it for forensics) in her dressing gown pocket. Gemma discovers she's losing the life she had carefully built since moving out of her parents' home, and how uncomfortable she feels of having a broken home at the age of 32. She wakes up frightened at 5am everyday, scared to death that this is how her life would pan out from hence. And she keeps praying that Noel will come home soon. Using her vivid imagination, she fantasises about how her dad is suffering with Collete, how Maureen finds a new man, etc. Gemma herself, lost her boyfriend to her ex-best friend Lily, who's just written this wonderfully received novel, making her life even less bearable.

Told you it's a good book with a huge dose of irish humour thrown in for good measure too. I'm only page 90 and i'm already hooked. haha.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Easter!

Busy Easter weekend! Got my screening report from the doctors on Thursday, I have to cut down on sugars, oily food and carbs.... uhoh, nothing about the lumps so i'm grateful. Marc Jacobs bag arrived in the evening, woohoo!   Good Friday was spent in Church and shopping at Sim Lim Square for Hao-e's new PC. Pilates on Saturday morning after a week's break, super out of shape.  think i should probably start doing some exercises at home and maybe go for swim downstairs when i get a chance. Chewy had a good scrubbing session at noon then off to watch Le Noir at Sands Theatre on Saturday afternoon, fun! Cousin-in-law's wedding dinner at Conrad on Saturday evening, no shark's fin which was a bummer. Easter mass on Sunday morning followed by Qingming thingamie at Mt Vernon. Sunday brunch at York Hotel's Penang Hawker Buffet, yum! Watched 1.5 movies too - GI Joe (meh) and SVFV (vulgar).  SVFV was the movie that  was banned and made the h...

dinner at swizzle inn

last night we had a most scrumptious bbq dinner at the original swizzle inn . much much much better than the dinner we had some days back with O and K at the branch in warwick. woo.... i had the char-grilled prime rib and the much famed rum swizzle, while hao-e had the margarita shrimp and strawberry daiquiri. blogging about it brings back nice memories. heh. Oh! C and i found some fresh watercress at the marketplace yesterday. so today's lunch we had watercress soup. i've been yearning for some light clear vegetable soup for some time... especially after a discussion with HL about the lack of vege variety here, and how she spotted kailan on the island! KAILAN !!! how did they manage to get their hands on kailan ?! i was joking with HL that one of the chefs must have secretly brought over some seeds and planted some in his back garden. or else why doesn't kailan appear in the vege aisle of the marketplace as well?! oh, and i bought some canned longan, jackfrui...

Forgive and Forget

it's been a long time since i've written anything of a serious nature. i try to keep this blog lighthearted but some things have been bugging me lately and i need to ventilate and detox myself. so please bear with me as i spurt and sputter some bad blood. one, because of man A's negligence, my start date has been delayed till further notice. was rather upset about it, not because i was looking forward to what i thought i was about to do, but because once again, my plans have been thwarted by things and people beyond my control. i should have been able to start in july had hao-e's permanent work permit been granted right after his first temporary work permit lapsed. BUT, it didn't happen that way cos hao-e had to settle for a second temporary work permit as they tried to sort out his permanent one. now, with this delay, i'm not sure when i can begin contributing to the "save stella" fund. [C was really cute today as i told her the amount that i ...