MARIAN Keyes's funny, touching novels have entertained readers for almost 25 years as her heroines, once in search of love, have grown up and negotiated life's spectrum of experiences – marriages, kids, exes, jobs – often while still in search of love.
Always a delight to speak to, Limerick-born Keyes (56) is as effervescent as her writing, with her sparkling humour, generous nature and heartfelt honesty.
Even those who haven't read her books will delight at her musings on Instagram and Twitter, as she writes in her inimitable style about 'Himself' (her husband Tony Baines), 'the gamut of life's trials and tribulations' (her mum) and other members of her family.
"I have so much fun on Twitter," she enthuses. "All I do is waste time. Lots of people follow me who have never read my books, and who are never going to read my books, but they think I'm good fun."
Her upbeat manner today is a far cry from her well-documented earlier years of alcoholism and the crippling depression which started in 2009 and plagued her for more than four years, during which she sought a plethora of both conventional and alternative therapies. It lifted in 2014 as inexplicably as it arrived.
But it has taken the Dún Laoghaire resident – whose novels include Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, This Charming Man and The Break – more than two-and-a-half years to complete her latest novel, Grown Ups, because her dad Ted died in December 2018 after a long battle with Alzheimer's, which halted Keyes's creative process for six months.
"It was like getting a dead arm to the brain and I would sit and stare at the computer and try desperately to plan how the story was going to end, but I couldn't access the feelings I needed in order to write it properly," she recalls.
How did she cope with the loss?
"Quite well. I'm grieving but I'm functioning and I did from the beginning. I was afraid that it might plunge me back into deep depression. I'm well now," Keyes continues. "The emotions that I'm feeling are appropriate, they're grief. I don't feel different from myself. I'm grieving but I'm still me.
"I've had all the symptoms of grief, like sleeplessness or terrible exhaustion or terrible sorrow and the fear that my mother's going to die. It's made me very needy around her. I keep making her promise not to [die], which is ridiculous. We laugh about it because we know she has no say in it, but it made me not able to work."
She doesn't like to linger on the subject of her depression, for fear that talking about it will spark its return. Nor does she embark on lengthy book tours, which can mess with her head, she says.
The tour for Grown Ups is the biggest she's done since before 2009. She's doing a handful of events in February, plus TV and radio, before trips to South Africa and Canada. These days, she knows the warning signs.
"It'll be OK, but I do worry about pushing myself too hard. I can tell the minute I'm in over my head by the way I feel. I start to feel like I'm in a nightmare, so I'm trying to find a balance."
Grown Ups is a tale about a glamorous, seemingly happy family – until you scratch the surface to find a plethora of contemporary problems, from overspending and debt, to bulimia, family clashes and complications facing blended families.
Bulimia is not something Keyes has suffered with herself, she says.
"This is not my story, but bulimia isn't spoken about that much. A lot of women of all ages have a really disordered relationship with food and body image. It's really important to write about that because I think everyone feels ashamed if they do feel like that."
She says her fictional couples are not her and her husband – although some personality aspects are similar. He handles all the bits of her career that she doesn't want to do, although they stop short of calling him her manager. They've just celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary.
"We were both a bit stunned, looking at each other, thinking, 'Jesus!' But if you marry somebody who treats you nicely and with kindness and respect, you probably have a better chance of staying the distance than somebody who you suspect might be playing offside," Keyes reflects.
"But then, other people might find the kind ones really boring. If you're married for a long time, you live through several marriages. It's not just one unsteady broken stream of the same. People change and they can change in different directions.
"Talking to each other about the important stuff now and again helps. We watch telly together, that's our special time together. That's our thing."
Celebrating her anniversary, she posted on Instagram that at one point she thought she'd be alone forever.
"I really did. But in fairness, I was a drinking alcoholic in those days, I was nobody's catch. I was just lucky that I met him at a time when I thought, 'I deserve somebody nice'," she says.
They got together in the early 90s, when her alcoholism was at its worst and she ended up in rehab, only to find Baines waiting for her when she got out. They were married a year later. They live in a big house in the south Dublin suburbs, not far from where she grew up, but never had children – although it was not for want of trying.
They were almost at IVF stage when they decided to put on the brakes.
"At that point, I felt I was being told something by the universe, that nobody gets everything. I had a really nice husband and a career I was loving. I was sober and life was really good.
"I can't describe it because I'm not in any way religious, it was just an ego check from the universe, which said, 'Hold on there a minute, take a look at what you have'. Together we decided to focus on what we had, rather than what we hadn't.
"I do regret not having children. We would have loved them and I still feel that. My brother's having a new baby any second now [the baby has since been born]. It makes me curious that there are these people we could have met and that we didn't. I don't really feel sad now, but I acknowledge that it would have been something lovely."
She's been writing about the modern woman for nearly a quarter of a century, and agrees the heroines of today are very different to the ones she wrote about at the beginning of her career. Are women still looking for Mr Right?
"I think desire for companionship is incredibly human and we'll always seek that out, whether it's with platonic friends or in a romantic relationship. The idea of finding 'The One' or waiting for 'The One' is a very pointless exercise, and one where a person is always going to be disappointed.
"I'm wondering if people are starting to realise that there is no other human being out there who will come and fix all your broken bits and make you feel extremely happy without a break. There's a more mature discussion about relationships these days," says Keyes.
"I still write about love. The humour will never go. But I accept more that love does not conquer all."
:: Grown Ups by Marian Keyes is published by Michael Joseph, priced £20.
