2024
Phase Eight Book Club
Summer is the perfect time to slow down the pace, take some time to yourself and get lost in
a wonderful book. That’s why Page Eight, the Phase Eight book club is back - and we’re back
with a bang as we have an exclusive interview with the one and only Marian Keyes!
Behind the Book
with Marian Keyes
Marian’s amazing new book My Favourite Mistake revisits one of her wonderful Walsh sisters,
Anna and has just been released, Marian kindly spoke to us about it.
We loved the balance you created between small life moments and big life decisions – how did you approach that?
My two main characters in My Favourite Mistake – Anna and Joey – had spent a good twenty years criss-crossing each other’s paths, and when they once again wash up on the same stretch of shore, they’ve clocked up an average number of terrible acts committed against one another. Ordinary terrible acts – no serial killers here.
But at the same time, I don’t mean cutesy mistakes like poor punctuality or forgetting where you parked your car: I’m talking about things we’ve (and what I mean is I’ve done) that have had actual consequences. (One of the other titles I’d played around with was The Terrible Things I’ve Done. I would read that book).
Almost no one gets to mid-life without having accumulated mistakes, so with Anna, who’s in her late forties in the book (though she’s constantly surprised she’s not still twenty-one), it felt like an opportunity to explore a character who’s coming to terms with a mid-life reckoning.
Through Anna’s journey within the book, I hope people are able to see that mistakes aren’t just mistakes, no matter how big or small – they’re opportunities to grow, learn, and move on.
She’s fallen out of love with everything in her life – her stressful job in Manhattan, her long-term partner and New York itself. Believing that she’d somehow be okay, she gave it all up and relocated to Dublin.
But no adjustment is smooth, and her expectations were way off the mark. But, as most of us come to learn over time, being alive is all about being a pawn in a cosmic game. We can try to force life to play in a particular way but ultimately, we must shape ourselves to fit our circumstances. And we can – but it doesn’t happen immediately.
Female friendships and sisterhood take centre-stage in the story – was it important to you to tell a feminist story within this book?
In all my books, I write about contemporary women and our challenges, and there are an awful lot of challenges and endless ways to be a woman. And whilst I always include romance in my stories, too, in My Favourite Mistake I wanted to explore love in its different forms – not just romantic love, but the mythology around female friendships and the complexity of love between family members.
What message would you like readers to take away from My Favourite Mistake?
I’d be delighted if my beloved readers felt that we don’t need to judge others or indeed ourselves for the worst thing we’ve ever done. If we can accept that every person who has ever lived has been variously cowardly, selfish, envious, angry, afraid, avaricious, dishonest, bored, cruel – the list goes on – it might help absolve ourselves from the shame of our own bad decisions and our anger with those who have hurt us.
I believe that people are capable of changing their behaviour. That we can mature and do better. I’ve tried my best throughout my life to make amends along the way, but my mistakes, missteps – whatever I want to call them – are facts: they exist, they’ll always exist. So will yours. But I hope readers will find, as Anna does, that relief comes with the simple yet profound realisation that every person who has ever lived has a number of shameful acts and regrets under their belt.
But it doesn’t mean we’re bad. It simply means we’re human.
Will more stories about the Walsh sisters be coming?
Honestly, I’d never had any intention of writing a sequel to any of my books. I’d tried to write a sequel to Watermelon (which is about Claire Walsh) in 2016, but that didn’t work, and that book eventually became The Break about entirely different people. After that, I thought I’d never revisit the Walshes, but when it came to writing Again, Rachel, a storyline just arrived in my head and I knew I wanted to see if it would work for Rachel and Luke.
So I don’t know, is the honest answer. I never ‘decide’ with my logical head what to write about. It happens at a different level, more intuitive. Suddenly I find myself interested by a particular issues or an idea for a character starts to rise up in me.
What advice would you give to someone aspiring to write their first novel?
I would encourage anyone aspiring to write their first novel to remember that writing isn’t a magical, mystical thing. It’s very empowering to discover that writing fiction is 95% hard work, that the moments of wild inspiration are rare.
It takes away a lot of my own fear when I remember that all I have to do is show up at my desk and try and keep trying to write words that actually convey my feelings, that it will take time and I’ll feel frustrated and like a failure but if I keep at it, the words on my screen will eventually be what I’m actually trying to say.
Take pride in it, and try to enjoy it. Write for your own pride and try not to think about anybody else reading it, because you’ll be far more unfettered then in what you actually write.
Courage, mes braves! You can do it!
What authors do you always look forward to reading?
Oh, so many! This is not a complete list but I LOVE Louise O’Neill, Ruth Jones, Bernardine Evaristo, Mhairi McFarlane, Jojo Moyes, Liane Moriarty, Emma Dabiri, Naoise Dolan, Bolu Babalola, and Louise Kennedy. (I’m squirming with fear about the number of beloveds who, thanks to my colander brain, I’ve doubtless left out. I apologise!)
I read a huge amount of crime and some of my favourites are Liz Nugent, Jane Harper, Dorothy Koomson, Tana French, Jane Casey, Elly Griffiths, Caz Frears, Erin Kelly, Sarah Hilary, Richard Osman and Ann Cleeves. (Again, my apologies for those I’ve inadvertently omitted.)
What is your go-to summer read genre?
Perhaps unexpectedly, holidays are when I read non-fiction. There’s more time to slow down and concentrate than the rest of the year, when everything has to be done at high speed.
Thank you so much, Marian! Get your copy of My Favourite Mistake here
