Hand Over the Keyes

I mentioned Marian Keyes a while back; she's actually one of my favorite chick-lit authors, a fun mix of quick readability and emotional plausibility--that is, her protagonists act and react in ways a bit more believable than the women in some of her peers' novels. The Other Side of the Story is "her best book to date," India Knight tells Telegraph readers, which means I should probably move it a little higher on my to-read pile.

It is far more tightly plotted and better paced than its predecessors, it has texture and form in spades, it had me in tears more than once and, very often, it had me barking with laughter.

Meanwhile, Emma Hagestadt of The Independent chats with Keyes about "her most technically ambitious novel," and elicits a solid summary of her collected output:

"In 1994, when I first started writing, there was no mainstream literature that articulated the unique concerns and confusions of the post-feminist woman. I think chick-lit really helped define who we were. It focused on huge concerns about body image, and talked about our relationship with food, money, and work."

(The photo, by the way, comes from a Sydney Morning Herald reprint of a Guardian profile.)