Anybody Out There (Marian Keyes)*****

If Lucy in the Sky was the book that started me reading again, Anybody Out There was the book that made sure I didn’t stop. It is part of a series of books about five sisters, and, while it is not strictly a sequel, the beginning would have had more impact if I’d read about Anna before her depression in Marian Keyes’ previous books. Keyes’ wit, although undeniably brilliant, sometimes seems out of place in such a serious novel, and, to begin with, I didn’t feel nearly as close to Anna as I wanted to.

But that didn’t last. Anybody Out There is one of the most gripping and moving books I’ve ever read. Even though a lot of it is about makeup. Anna’s depression is realistically portrayed, and she is a loveable character once you’ve got used to the sudden switches between her deep unhappiness and her humorous way of looking at the world where she doesn’t sound depressed at all. But this is realistic too: you can have depression and a sense of humour at the same time. The only depressed people I’ve met who didn’t have a sense of humour probably never had one.

The book is full of twists and turns that I never expected, yet everything seems perfectly right once it’s happened. It was the sort of story where I wanted a perfect resolution, yet I felt this would be untrue to the spirit of the book if this actually happened. I won’t say how Keyes dealt with this problem, but it was ultimately one of the most satisfying books I have ever read.

Keyes’ characters are all great. Anna and her former lover Aidan have a great relationship that is very romantic, but never becomes embarrassing to read about. Some of their encounters are extermely amusing, starting from their very first meeting. But Keyes never lets you forget that it’s about to go wrong.

There are also a couple of hilarious subplots featuring Anna’s friend Jacqui and delightfully mad sister Helen. Their stories are very different from Anna’s, but do not seem out of place, and are, in many ways, a welcome relief from the misery, as well as a reminder that the whole world keeps going even when, to Anna, it seems like it’s over. These storylines also give Keyes the opportunity to use her full range of comedic writing talents. Anna’s whole family seems to be verging on insanity – and are consequently great fun to read about. I was glad to find out that Keyes has written other books about them. An earlier novel, Angels, starring Anna’s sister Maggie, probably the ‘sane’ one of the sisters, will be reviewed later.

In some ways, Anybody Out There doesn’t have a plot. It’s more Anna’s internal resolution of a problem than a story of outside events, although there certainly are plenty of those. But it works really well. There’s so much going on, all the time, even when Anna is just sitting and feeling sad. Loads of critics go on about how books are ‘remarkable achievements’ and I usually get really annoyed when I read them because, for me, there just isn’t anything special about it. So I don’t want to use this term ever because it’s misleading and I’d only ever condone its use if there’s something about the book that’s really really original and even then I wouldn’t want to use it myself in public.

But this time, I’m going to make an exception. Anybody Out There is officially a remarkable achievement.