Becca’s Cyber Home

I just finished the funniest book I’ve read in ages: The Other Side Of The Story by Marian Keyes.

It’s about three women whose lives become intertwined as they sludge through life’s bumpy road of careers, family, and love. First, I have to warn you–Marian Keyes is an Irish author. The reason I present that as a warning is two-fold: first, if you don’t like to read stories where you might have to stop and decode the vernacular, you probably don’t like to read European authors if you’re American; second, I LOVE to read books by European authors because I totally dig the vernacular, so that may color my raves. It’s probably horridly, stereo-typically American of me, but I get such a kick out their sayings. Like snog. You can’t find a much cooler word than that!

Anyhoo, I diverge. It took me a little while to get into the book (perhaps because I was coming down of the high of a vacation in Las Vegas?), but once I hit my groove, I couldn’t put it down. I even snuck it into work with me! (Shhhh… don’t tell anyone)

The dialogue in The Other Side is good, but what’s even better is the internal workings of the characters. Marian Keyes tells it with humor and empathy. It’s dark and light all at once, and Marian Keyes hits female insecurities and habits dead on. OK, she gets mine, anyway. And the insults and character descriptions are pithy and laugh-out-loud funny. One of my favorites is describing a character’s bosses as being frequent visitors to the dark side, and they probably even have frequent flier miles. I love it. I’ll have to figure out how I can work “frequent visitors to the dark side” into my everyday use…

The Other Side Of The Story is a don’t-miss. I’m definitely going to take a look at her other novels.