PS I Love You (Cecelia Ahern)**

PS I Love You is not only a successful novel, but also a successful film. Cecelia Ahern’s first novel was highly acclaimed, and it is certainly a novel of great originality, with just the right amount of tragedy to get Hollywood interested. But it’s not that good.

The idea of it, while certainly very sentimental, is actually really interesting. Holly is grieving after losing her husband Gerry to a brain tumour. She discovers that, before he died, he wrote her a number of letters. She opens one each month, and this helps her to heal.

But the problem is that neither Holly nor Gerry seems very nice. Holly seems more self-indulgent than truly unhappy. And, while grief can certainly affect changes in people’s personalities, it is difficult to see Holly as part of a threesome with the wonderfully mad Sharon and Denise. There are a few flashbacks to what is supposed to be a glimpse of a fun-loving Holly, but all we really know is that she enjoys herself a lot when she’s drunk.

The way Holly treats her elder brother Richard is dreadful. Okay, she grows to understand him during the course of the book, but I was wondering all the way through what Holly’s problem was. Yes, Richard is not terribly sociable, but it doesn’t seem as though he actually dislikes people. He just feels uncomfortable in social situations, which is more than understandable given the way that Holly laughs at him. I think he’s a lovely man.

Then there’s a bit later in the book where Holly passes off her colleague Alice’s work as her own. It’s absolutely dreadful, and I really can’t blame Alice for ignoring her after that. I was hoping that Holly had secretly told her boss the truth, and that this was going to be a great opportunity for Alice, who is a really sweet girl, but I didn’t know Holly well enough to know if she was going to do the right thing or not. All I was sure of was that she can be a selfish bitch.

Gerry has obviously gone to a lot of trouble in order to write the notes, which probably wasn’t easy for him given his illness. He needed to be able to leave the house without Holly’s noticing (which, unfortunately, makes you wonder how attentive Holly really was), so you have to admire his perseverance. But he’s such a bossy know-it-all, and that’s just not attractive.

Gerry is someone who thinks he always knows best. The notes he writes to Holly tell her what to do with her life each month. She’s never that much into his ideas, but she goes along with them anyway, and he’s always right. Maybe if I’d known he was right as soon as the note was opened, it would have been okay. It would have been better still if I’d kind of formed the same conclusions about Holly’s needs just from reading about her and how she was feeling. But Gerry’s ideas just seemed to come out of nowhere, and it’s just annoying. If it had turned out that Holly had strangled him to death, I wouldn’t have liked her any better - murderesses are even worse than insipid lumps - but I’d have understood why she wanted to.

While the characterisations in PS I Love You aren’t nearly as strong as those in Ahern’s later novels, particularly the wonderful If You Could See Me Now, there are still many promising characters. Richard is great. Then we have Holly’s hilarious friend Sharon – stupid and annoying at times, not to mention embarrassing, but a really nice person, with admirable warmth and patience where Holly is concerned. Daniel, who spends his time falling in love with and getting bossed about by the female characters, is just the kind of drip I like. Holly’s sister Ciara is adorable - wayward and independent but somehow very innocent. Ciara is a character I’d love to read more about. Her Australian travels sound fascinating. What’s more, they take place on the other side of the world from Holly.