Rachel's Holiday (Marian Keyes)*****

I didn’t like Rachel’s Holiday at all until I was quite a way into it, but I loved it by the end. A lot of people talk about Marian Keyes’ humour and warmth and great characters, and all those things are demonstrated in this book. But one of the things I really like about books like Rachel’s Holiday, Watermelon and Anybody Out There is that Keyes is not afraid to create heroines that some people might find difficult to empathise with. And maybe the fact that Angels, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married and particularly No Dress Rehearsal left me cold could be more of a sign of my failure to appreciate such an imperfect heroine than Keyes’ inability to work a miracle every time.

With Rachel’s Holiday, Keyes takes risks. Rachel is a horrible person. I have no real problems with the fact that she’s a drug addict. That in itself doesn’t make her a bad person, although most of her undesirable personality traits are probably related to her dependence on drugs. But I’ve met some drug addicts who are very nice, and there are also plenty of nice drug addicts in this book.

But Rachel is a bit of a bitch. She’s also a total slag. And most of the worst things about her, you don’t even know about until the book’s half-over. She’s smug and superior and shallow. It does seem a bit harsh in the beginning when her family packs her off to rehab. After all, the book is told from Rachel’s point of view, so it’s quite easy to believe her when she says she’s not an addict. In retrospect, I admire her for emptying her valium tablets down the toilet. That can’t have been easy.

I didn’t like Rachel at all, but drugs can affect your personality, so I was prepared to give her a chance - and not stop reading in disgust. And I ended up enjoying the book a lot. I don’t know how realistic it is, and I’m sure that rehabilitation, like counselling, is a very individual thing, and different people will respond differently to the many different approaches. But it was easy to believe that the approach used on Rachel was one that would have an effect on her.

The other characters are great. One good thing about landing your heroine in rehab is that you can put just about any character you like in your story, and it doesn’t matter that Rachel wouldn’t normally hang around with them. Trapping a group of strong and mismatched characters together can be really funny. And also really touching, when you see them learning to get along despite everything. Look at all those comedies set on a desert island. Look at Big Brother. Keyes has filled her desert island with some wonderful characters, and they all have believable stories. She’s also not afraid to make fun of psychiatrists a bit. And quite right too. Most psychiatrists are madder than their patients.

So it’s worth a read – but you need a bit of patience. Rachel has good qualities if you can find them, and the book is full of humour and great characters. And while the ending might be predictable, the twists and turns are not.