Romantic love, experienced by most people at one time or another in differing iterations, is at-times illusory in nature. This love is capable of summit-attaining highs and depth-inducing despair. As Irish novelist and poet, James Stephens (1880 – 1950) said of romantic love, “What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow”.
James Stephens’ poignant and soul-stirring words are readily and tellingly reverberated throughout the pages of powerhouse Irish author, Marian Keyes’, latest stellar novel, My Favourite Mistake.
Taking place predominantly in the unassuming and uneventful (or is it?) utopic small Irish town, Maumtully, (situated delicately on the weather-driven west coast), this novel expertly has us feeling all the emotions that Marian so cleverly invokes in her novels (joy, heartbreak, happiness and despair).
Our feisty, fiery and independent (whilst also inwardly fragile and people-pleasing) protagonist and heroine, Anna Walsh (forty-eight years old), is at a life-altering crossroads in her life. Anna, from Dublin, has been living the high life in New York since her twenties, the last eighteen years working “As a senior executive at ‘legendary’ New York PR firm McArthur on the Park, which represented some of the most covetable cosmetic brands on the planet, I could have as much free product as I wanted”.
As Anna reflects, “Looked at objectively, cosmetics are never a matter of life and death, but when you work in that pressure-cooker world, you sort of forget. Until one day you find yourself more worried about bagging a five-star review for an eyebrow pencil than the state of the planet”.
Things are looking pretty rocky for Anna’s relationship with her long-term partner, Angelo (an art dealer), and then the relationship ends abruptly without too much fanfare.
Anna makes the ostensibly wise (or is it?) decision to move back to Ireland, and from that point the drama Anna has left behind in New York follows her in some ways back to Ireland. Anna thinks to herself prior to leaving New York, “After eighteen years of my parents and sisters (Claire, Margaret, Rachel and Helen) begging me to come home to Dublin, they were finally about to get their wish….They weren’t going to like it”.
Anna feels that any appearance of a butterfly in her life is a ‘sign’ to do things. A butterfly appears to Anna which she sees as a sign to ‘go home’. Then Anna realises that “The long and short of it was that no one should move jobs, countries and continents because they saw a butterfly”..
Good fortune comes Anna’s way when she finds out that her friends, Brigit and Colm Kearney, need Anna’s help. On their property, Kearney’s Farm, on Ireland’s west coast at Connemara (the nearest town, Maumtully, having a population of 1, 271), Brigit and Colm have an Airbnb, a studio and acres of farmland (which is inherited from Colm’s parents), on which they are building a “high-end retreat, called Dolphin Cove”. There would be “No gym or swimming pool because nature would provide: guests could immerse themselves in the bracing Atlantic and return ecstatic. Instead of a thirty-minute sprint on a treadmill, they and a wise guide would climb a local mountain”.
Colm’s and Brigit’s ambitious, yet noble, plans have hit a not insignificant snag. In fact it is a calamitous obstacle. There has been vandalism on their property of the work that builders have been doing and “machinery disabled”. And it looks like locals have committed these invasive crimes.
As Anna is told, “The investors have frozen funds….The builders have stopped work, they’re not allowed back until this is fixed. Brigit has to find someone to talk with the locals, find out their exact issues, so they can be made right”. There are a seismic torrent of complaints and threats (anonymous) on social media about the project. And it is known that some of the locals are opposed to the resort for different reasons.
Anna, experienced in PR, seems to be the veritably right choice to liaise with and placate the locals. However it looks like Anna is going to be in a world of trouble. Joey Armstrong (the broker Anna will have to be working with) is someone she has a formidable and awkward history with. Back in the day in New York, they were ‘mad’ about each other, but there were always a plethora of reasons why it couldn’t work (Not least because Joey was a commitment-phobic womaniser and the father of Anna’s best friend, Jacqui’s, baby daughter, Trea).
What is Joey’s childhood trauma that may have contributed to his inability to trust and commit?
Anna has rattling skeletons and grave inner pain in her own past. Whilst living in New York, Anna’s husband Aidan (thirty-five years old at the time) was killed in a car accident. Anna survived the crash, but was left with a hurting and broken heart and a menacing scar on her face that people notice.
Joey is now divorced from the glamorous socialite, Elisabeth, and has three young sons, Isaac, Zeke and Max.
Can Anna and Joey get ‘on side’ with the townsfolk and get them to be agreeable to the building of Brigit and Colm’s resort?
Who are the vandals in the town? Can the sullen policeman, Nicolas Burke, actually do anything to restore law and order?
Can Anna and Joey leave the past (and that kiss) in the past?
Will any sparks fly between them as they work (and consequentially socialise together) in Maumtully.
Can Anna trust the townsfolk in Maumtully?
Who is the enigmatic Oscar-winning director, Ben Mendoza, who lives out of town?
Do his parties live up to their dazzling reputation?
Why do Anna and Jacqui no longer speak to each other?
Does it have something to do with Joey?
Can Anna get on top of her menopause symptoms?
Can Kearney’s Farm and the dream to develop a resort be salvaged?
Marian has written a novel that overflows with intelligence, wisdom and deep insight into the human condition. Themes of grief, love (romantic, friendship and family love), childhood abuse and small-town secrets and loyalties are expertly examined and explored by Marian.
Bravo Marian! Yet again you have written a novel that was highly engrossing and had my heart breaking and put back together. I always love books set in Ireland (my ancestors moved from Ireland to Australia during the potato famine in the 1800s) and Irish people are ones you’d generally like to catch up with for a coffee (or a pint at the pub for those who drink!).
I loved My Favourite Mistake. Put me down to read whatever Marian writes next!
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