Date Posted:16:21:12 11/24/06 Fri Author: Syl Subject: Anybody Out There?
This was sent in by Sheila,in OZ. Thanks, Sheila!
TITLE : Anyone out there
AUTHOR : Marian Keyes
GENRE : Chick Lit (sort of)
I had never read a book by this author and I saw a lady at the swimming pool with it and I asked her what is was like, and she said strange. That comment came back to me afterwards as probably very accurate.
We start off with Anna, who obviously usually resides in New York, but at the present she is at home with mum and dad, recuperating from some sort of accident. She is desperately missing her husband but he seems to have disappeared.
The plot of the book hooks you in quickly as you want to know what has happened and what is going on. Anna’s story is the part of the book which called to me the most. Her bewilderment and devastation brought me to tears a couple of times in the book and there are not many books that do that to me. I can easily imagine anybody in her position doing and feeling as she does, and that to me is what made it enjoyable, it was ‘relatable’.
The other main story line is a typically chick lit story involving her sister and a wacky involvement in a private investigation into a criminal element in their part of the world.
To me it seems Keyes has written two books and melded them together in bits, though to be fair perhaps some readers will need the quirky relief offered by the sister’s story line. I could almost have done without the other plot line, it struck me as too silly, but I confess to feeling that way about a lot of the Chick Lit genre.