Marian Keyes talks about the darkly comic sequel to Rachel’s Holiday, speaks frankly about life after alcoholism in her earlier years, her more recent dark period and how her husband has made her a better person.

There aren’t many novelists whose handling of dark subjects like addiction and depression can leave you feeling waves of compassion and empathy in one breath – and have you chuckling into your cocoa in another.

­That is the genius of writer Marian Keyes – whose novels including Watermelon, ­ This Charming Man, Grown Ups and ­ The Break, have sold in their millions.

Marian’s first review – for Watermelon – was in Irish Tatler (which was then a sister title to Woman’s Way). ­These were in the long ago, pre-internet days. Her mother called her at work in London to say she’d ‘heard’ that Irish Tatler had run a review, but she couldn’t get her hands on a copy. So Marian rang Irish Tatler on the office pay phone, explained who she was to a receptionist and asked if she wouldn’t mind reading out the review. ­ The receptionist began, got two sentences in, then Marian ran out of change and the call was disconnected.

Subsequently she got to read the review. It was very nice. Lauded by contemporaries, including David Nicholls and Jojo Moyes, there’s light and dark in all Keyes’ novels, equal measures of hilarity and heartbreak. She has explored hard-hitting issues, from addiction to cancer, via bereavement and domestic violence – but thanks to her huge gift for humour, they are not depressing books. Far from it.

Meanwhile, her combined 386k followers on Instagram and Twitter tap into her witty asides about love, life, handbags, makeup and shoes, along with references to Mammy Keyes (her mum) and Himself (her husband).

Yet life hasn’t always been a laugh a minute for the 58-year-old publishing phenomenon.

­The alcoholism of her wild 20s, which led to a spell in rehab, and a bout of depression little more than a decade ago, have been well-documented. She hasn’t had a drink for 28 years.

“I still go to meetings,” she says candidly. “­ That’s why I don’t relapse.” And Keyes’ latest book sees her back in the thick of the subjects she knows so well – addiction, rehab, relationships and family.

Keyes vowed she’d never write a sequel to Rachel’s Holiday, which centres on the eponymous heroine, a cocaine addict whose family pays for her to go to the Cloisters, Dublin’s answer to the Betty Ford Clinic, which she claims she’s only agreed to because it’s time to have a holiday.

“Back then, addiction was something regarded as very shameful in a woman, and that it should be kept secret,” says the bubbly novelist, who made her own alcoholism public when her writing career took off in the mid-Nineties.

“I was so naïve. And so grateful I was no longer in the prison of addiction. I never felt it was something to be ashamed of. It meant that when people read the book, they were able to be more compassionate with themselves.

So many people have contacted me to say they’ve gotten clean or sober from reading it, they stopped thinking of it as a moral failing and began to see it as it is, which is a condition that the person has no control over.

“Maybe a lot of people were shocked, but I never shocked myself.”

WHAT RACHEL DOES NEXT

A quarter of a decade on, recovering addict Rachel Walsh is back, in the sequel Again, Rachel, which finds her older and cleaner, working as an addiction therapist in the Cloisters, with a boyfriend, family and an enduring fondness for expensive trainers.

All is rosy, until her handsome ex-husband Luke arrives from America after his mother dies, and makes contact, upsetting the equilibrium of Rachel’s life. Again, Rachel was written in Ireland, almost entirely during lockdown.

­There have been no such romantic complications for Keyes, who celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary to Tony Baines in 2020. ­ They met at his 30th birthday party when he had a girlfriend and Keyes was mired in alcoholism. When she got out of rehab, they began seeing each other, initially as friends, but got engaged 11 months later.

He worked in IT and was the type of nice, kind man she’d avoided during her wild booze-filled years, but who has clearly given her the support and stability she so needed.

By her third book, Keyes had become the breadwinner and Baines has long been a supportive partner, handling her media requests, proofreading her books and sorting out contracts and taxes.

She suffered crippling depression in 2009, experiencing suicidal impulses which she has since spoken about. Prestigious presenter Alan Yentob recently interviewed Marian as part of the BBC’s Imagine film series. Titled “My (not so) Perfect Life”, Yentob meets Marian to “explore her incredible journey from hard-partying waitress to internationally best-selling author and everything that she's learnt about life, love and story-telling along the way”. It begins her story in the 1980s, when she had just arrived in London from Ireland, before looping back to her childhood in Cork, and eventually bringing the tale back to the present day. In it she candidly deals with some dark moments of her life.

In the film she recalls how, when she told Tony she was ready to leave this world, he suggested they watch an episode of Come Dine With Me, and the diversion helped that moment to pass.

The depression lifted around four years later, almost as quickly as it had arrived. While she writes about other people’s romantic traumas and relationship problems, she and Baines rub along quite happily, she agrees. She cannot overemphasis  the difference he has made to her life.

“I know people in awful American films say, ‘You’ve made me a better person’, but he has made me a better person. He is very kind and non-judgmental, without being a doormat, and he’s very calm. He loses his temper about once a decade and he won’t have a shouting match with me.

“I’ve learned, in confrontation, to be more respectful. I catastrophise at the drop of the hat, he says ‘Let’s look at the facts’. He’s been very good for me and he’ll always give people the benefit of the doubt.”

Their Silver Wedding anniversary celebrations were curtailed by the pandemic, she recalls.

“In the beginning, we planned a party, then we planned that the two of us would go for dinner and in the end, we celebrated by me putting on the lovely dress I’d bought for the party and taking the bins out in it,” she quips.

During lockdown they started cooking together in their home near Dublin, she recalls.

“We’d do fancy things like Ottolenghi, and that was a lovely, uniting thing, which I’d never have wanted to do before. Instead of having dinner on our laps in front of the news, we started sitting at the table looking at each other, which was very nice.”

Marian, who now co-hosts a podcast, Now You’re Asking, with Tara Flynn, believes she has changed in the 25 years since Rachel first came on the scene.

“The lovely thing about getting older is that the things that used to bother me when I was younger don’t so much any more, like an argument, or a snooty comment, or things that happen in traffic. I’m better at standing my ground, which just comes with living through things.”

There’s a big reveal in the latest book – not to give anything away – yet a particularly bleak event which might have you reaching for the tissues is tempered with her trademark humour in other aspects of Rachel’s life, as she deals with her multi-faceted family, her loves past and present and an eclectic mix of patients.

The attitude to addiction now has changed since Marian wrote Rachel’s Holiday, she agrees.

“As a recovering addict, addiction is mainstream. It’s not something that happens in the shadows, on the margins of life. The numbers of people addicted to alcohol, gambling, tablets, illegal drugs, food, whatever, there’s an awful lot of it.”

Unlike fellow authors David Nicholls and Jojo Moyes, Marian’s work has not been adapted for the big screen, even though many of her books – Grown Ups, The Break, The Other Side Of The Story – have been optioned.

“Over the years, people have asked about film or TV adaptations and it’s never really happened. I knew that if I started getting excited about it, I’d end up disappointed. And I was right. All I can do is write my books and whatever happens, happens.”

Shoe Lady

Marian, a makeup fanatic, admits to owning seven brands of foundation. But reveals on her own website (mariankeyes.com) that the "real figure is far higher".

Apparently it only became a problem during the first lockdown when suddenly she kept wanting to buy new foundations.

It made no sense, she explains, she was stuck in the house, meeting nobody. In retrospect, she thinks Zoom may have played a part in the sudden obsession, because she also spent a lot of time looking up scarves. "Also neck-lifts". She has covered all kinds of addictions in her books over the years, but (apart from makeup) one of her few cravings these days is shoes.

In, Again, Rachel, her eponymous heroine has a particular fondness for trainers, buying numerous pairs at a time.

Marian admits that she also has a shoe fetish, but yearns for pretty, sparkly types rather than practical flats.

Like your fictional character, do you wear trainers?

“No. I’m living vicariously through her because she’s tall. I’m really short and I can’t wear trainers because I’m too low to the ground and I’m not able to go with it. I’m so envious of people in trainers. It gives you so much comfort and freedom and you’re still really cool.

“I have ‘exercise-y’ trainers. I once ordered a pair of Balenciaga ones in pale

blue. ­They were so delicious but I felt like I’d had my feet sawn off . I was just too close to the floor. I’m 5ft 1 and I need some sort of elevation. So I had to send them back, after thinking they would be my salvation.”

What size shoe are you?

“I’m a 35 [EU size]. ­ That’s a 2. It’s terrible in the sales because they hardly order any 35s and sell out immediately. I live with insoles. I am the queen of the insoles, sometimes two pairs. ­ There’s nothing good about it.”

What are your favourite styles?

“I like clompy boots, with a bit of bounce in them. I have a pair by Uggs which are pink and fluffy and have a two-and-a-half-inch platform.

­They are bright pink and open toed but are like slippers and I see the cool girls wearing them with socks. I haven’t been able to leave the house in them yet, but I’m thinking I might. I thought that I could get away with them in the summer and liked the fluffiness and fun.”

Heels or flats?

“Mid heels. I haven’t owned a pair of flats in about 40 years. At this stage I prefer blocky heels. I was struggling a bit before the pandemic but I don’t think I’ll ever be in a pair of stilettos again. I feel like I’d need crutches to be able to stand up in them.”

What’s your favourite recent purchase?

“I bought some silver sandals from Clarks and I love them. ­ They are the perfect height and they are so comfortable because they have that Clarks’ bounce in the sole. And they have a bit of a platform so there’s no awful slope on the foot. They’re the winners.”

Do you have any designer shoes in your cupboard?

“Yes. I have a beautiful pair of black Malone Souliers stilettos, which are really elegant, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wear them again. I’ve had them since 2016.

“My mother bought me a beautiful pair of purple suede Manolos about 10 years ago which cost about €400, but they are timeless. ­ They are stilettos but they are unusual in that they are very comfortable.

“I think Manolos are made with love for the person who’s going to be wearing them. I have bunions now and I haven’t tried them on in a while, but I feel they would be kind and soft around the sore bits of my feet. If a person was going to spend money on expensive shoes, I’d recommend them.”

Would you have treatment for bunions?

“My sister had hers done and she said that they’ve come back so not to bother.”

How do you feel about pedicures?

“I’m always mortified revealing my feet to the lady. I always say, ‘Brace yourself. These’ll be the worst feet you’ve ever seen’ and they say, ‘No, I’ve seen it all’ and then they see my feet and they say, ‘Jesus, yes…’

“One of my ex-boyfriends said to me that you can strike a match on the sole of my feet – and he was right. My feet are awful. I love to have a pedicure because it takes the awfulness out of them for a while. But I hardly ever have them. Maybe just at the beginning of summer.”

Do you apply any foot cream?

“I keep buying those creams that have got 10 per cent urea in them and promising that I’ll apply them regularly but I don’t.

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