Members were happy to dis Sushi for Beginners by Irish writer, Marian Keyes, at our meeting on 5 January.
We found the writing formulaic, the characters one dimensional, superficial and forgettable. (Think the Devil Wears Prada mixed with Bridget Jones.) We couldn’t understand why it took the author 426 pages to unfold the plot.
Essentially, the book is about a bitchy editor, Lisa, her offsider, the warm-hearted but plain and down trodden, Ashling, and her best friend, Clodagh, who promptly betrays her.
The big questions are will they learn anything about themselves by the end of the book and who will end up with the hot guys - the boss, brooding Heathcliff lookalike, Jack Devine, and the charming standup comedian with freckles, Marcus Valentine? (Is the author having a lend of us with these names?)
The major problem with the novel is: do we care?
The book is set in the offices, flats, pubs and restaurants of Dublin, Ireland, but it could be in any big city in the western world - wherever they serve plenty of Vodka Red Bull.
We all agreed that this book was escapist fantasy (particularly, the scene where the big bad bossman, Jack, tenderly washes Ashling’s hair in the bathroom sink in the Ladies at the office. Who does that?)
This novel may be ok for your end of year holiday beach reading when you don’t want to think too hard - particularly if you are partial to episodes of rumpy-pumpy of the “urgent thrusting” variety to spice things up in your fiction. There are also some genuinely humorous scenes, such as when Clodagh becomes very drunk and offers to show off her episiotomy to women she has just met at the pub toilets.
There is another scene where Lisa meets a neighbourhood adolescent who wants to display her dance moves and says: “Don’t need an education. I’m going to be in a girl band and my Da says they’re all as thick as bottled shite.”
We dismissed the book as ‘chick-lit’ but interestingly, the author rejects this label, describing herself as a feminist who has dealt in her books with serious themes such as domestic violence, drug abuse, divorce and alcoholism. And it is true that she skates lightly over some dark issues in Sushi for Beginners such as homelessness, depression and child neglect.
The counselling Ashling receives from her doctor for her Weltschmerz hints at an intimacy with the problem, and Keyes has admitted publicly to dealing with issues of anxiety, depression and alcoholism from an early age. In fact, she began writing at the end of a period of rehabilitation at a clinic in Dublin in 1995.
She says her novels are always humorous and upbeat with an optimistic tone because she herself is very bleak and melancholic. Humour is a survival mechanism: “I write for me and I need to feel hopeful about the human condition …. And it isn’t entirely ludicrous to suggest that sometimes things might work out for the best.”
Marian Keyes has written four works of non-fiction and 13 novels which have sold over 35 million copies and been translated into 33 languages. She won the Irish Book Award for popular fiction in 2009 for This Charming Man. Her latest novel in book shops now is The Break.
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In the same way, we hope you will take away from our reviews some pearlers to share with your regular club.
