Watermelon (Marian Keyes)*****

This is the first book about the delightful Walsh family. While it isn’t quite as original as Anybody Out There, it is still an amazing book, and a lot of fun. Claire, the oldest of the five sisters, is witty and sparky with a wonderfully macabre sense of humour. It’s not easy to create a character who is humorous yet miserable. But Marian Keyes has done it.

Claire is very immature for twenty-nine. I don’t think I know anyone who is less mature than me, and one of my friends is eleven. But Claire is definitely more immature than me. She is also quite vulnerable and unsure of herself, but at the same time, she is very socially confident. Extremely friendly, but extremely miserable. Yet you never feel, Oh for God’s sake, woman, it’s not that bad.

It’s not as though Claire has no reason to feel unsure of herself. Just hours after the birth of her daughter, her husband James tells her he’s leaving her for their neighbour, Denise. Of course, Claire was very stupid to marry someone called James in the first place. We all know what fictional Jameses are like. But, as Claire seems to be completely unaware that she is no more than a product of Keyes’ imagination, and has no real life outside the pages of Watermelon and its sequels, it’s an understandable mistake.

Her family are all here apart from Maggie, the most disappointing of the sisters and the heroine of Angels. The mysterious Rachel is also absent (the more I hear about her, the more I look forward to reading Rachel’s Holiday, considered by many to be Keyes’ best book). Anna (who stars in Anybody Out There) drifts around sweetly and vaguely in search of voices from the beyond. The youngest, Helen, is enchantingly ignorant of such things as the need for studying when at university; the fact that her sisters’ clothes do not also belong to her, and other people’s feelings. (OMG, apart from the clothes thing, she could be me.)

It’s a long book, almost five hundred pages, but well worth it. All Claire is doing is recovering from James’ defection and trying to come to terms with being a mother. But it’s gripping stuff. Apart from one small slow bit, there’s a real sense of pace. The fact that sexy, caring Adam seems to like her so much only improves things. Claire’s baby, Kate, is a surprisingly strong character. Claire interacts with her and learns to understand her feelings and needs. She isn’t the best mother in the world, but she’s undoubtedly trying, and her difficulties probably aren’t that unusual - even among mothers whose husbands haven’t run off with bitches called Denise.

Claire does appear to be suffering from schizophrenia, but it’s so hilariously written, it’s difficult to feel seriously worried about it. She not only has conversations with parts of her brain, she has security guards running around trying to throw out unwelcome thoughts. But that doesn’t matter. Why should it? It should only be a problem if the voices are telling you something bad. And the voices (and security guards) in Claire’s head often make a lot more sense than she does. We should all get some of those.