Watermelon, Marian Keyes's very first novel, tells the extremely funny and wonderfully touching tale of a woman who thought she had it all - until the day she discovers that it's all gone . . .

So there is Claire days post-partum with no husband which causes her to return home with her daughter to her family in Dublin, Ireland. I’m sorry, you must think I’m very rude. We’ve hardly even been introduced and here I am telling you all about the awful things that have happened to me. As soon as the other waitresses found out that a suit had asked for my phone number and, worse again, that I had actually given it to him, I was treated like a pariah. It was a long time before I was invited round again to their squat to snort cocaine, I can tell you. Osman wrote The Thursday Murder Club in secret over 18 months when he had a gap in his filming schedule. He writes for no more than two hours, aiming for 1,000 words a day, except when he’s on set. “I can’t be TV head then book head.” Once he had 10,000 words it was easier to carry on than give up. “It’s like going to the gym. If you go for an hour every day for a year then you’ll be fit. If you write 1,000 words a day for 90 days then you’ve got yourself a 90,000 word book.” I like numbers very much,” replies the king of teatime trivia, modestly. “But at the heart of it, I’m proud of the books. So the numbers to me just said: ‘Well this is a thrill.’ It must be the same for you. You’d always sold a lot of copies, but you went through a bit when everyone was saying, ‘You know what? This is actually brilliant literature.’ Suddenly you were elevated,” he says. “You became a super-brand.” You can’t go round telling women they’re good at stuff – they’ll get ideas above their station! Marian KeyesAlthough James seemed to have forgotten one big fact. There is no divorce in Ireland. James and I were married in Ireland. Our marriage was blessed­­­ by the Fathers of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. Although a fat lot of good it had obviously done us. So long, Succour. I’d known that James was miserable for most of the time that I was pregnant, but I had put that down to my mood­ swings, my constant hunger, my raging sentimentality, where I cried at everything from Little House On the Prairie to The Money Programme. Brenda Wright celebrated her 80th birthday recently and came up to London to visit her sons. “She said: ‘I will turn up at 12 and I will be leaving at 4.30. All I want is a Chinese takeaway.’” Which is exactly what happened. Love the Walsh sisters? Don't miss out on the eagerly awaited sequel to Rachel's Holiday: AGAIN, RACHEL . . .

So what’s going to happen?’ I asked numbly. I didn’t for a second accept a single word of what he was saying. But the band keeps playing even though no one is dancing. I was having what to all intents and purposes might appear to the impartial outside observer to be a conversation, with James. But it wasn’t a conversation at all because I didn’t mean anything that I said and I didn’t accept anything that he said. When I asked him what was going to happen, I didn’t need an answer. I knew what was going to happen. He was coming home with me and the baby and there would be no more of this nonsense. Or driving the point about the mother's not cooking to the hyperbolic conclusion of the family being now suspicious of all real food.

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James (her ex-husband) was written not just as insufferable but like an actual sociopath. A pathological liar, that was manipulative, bitter, and just kept forgetting he had a daughter like literally every second was like 'oh ya, I have her I guess.' It was a really weird character choice the author made because now I'm questioning our protagonists intellect because she married a crazy person like psych ward crazy. Like keep an eye on your kid because she's got his genes so look out for prolonged bed wetting and her killing the house pets in your future BECAUSE YOU MARRIED A STRAIGHT UP LUNATIC! But no, I gave into peer pressure and agreed to be all new age about it. I was very doubtful, I can tell you. I mean I wouldn’t want any of my close friends or relatives at the removal of . . . say . . . my appendix. Humiliating! You’d be at such a disadvantage. All these people looking at you, at places of yourself you’d never even seen before, not even with a mirror. I didn’t know what my large intestine looked like. And by the same token I didn’t know what my cervix looked like. And nor did I want to.But half the staff of St Michael’s hospital did. Continuamente se refiere a la mujer con la que su marido le puso los cuerdos como "Fat cow" (vaca gorda)

The problem was everything between the beginning and the end. Very little happened. I didn't enjoy the endless days Maggie spent hanging out doing n0thing (the zero instead of o is quite intentional). In 2021 and 2022, Keyes joined Tara Flynn in a series for BBC Radio 4 called 'Now You're Asking', in which they discussed problems sent in by listeners (they called them 'askers').

Through meetings and discussions with James, and meetings and talks with Adam, Claire makes her decision. She decides she will leave James for good. She will work on building a love relationship with Adam. James will not accept responsibility for the affair he had. He says that Claire, through her demands on him and selfishness, drove him to have an affair. He won't admit that he was wrong. He turns the tables and makes it like he is a victim, and that Claire must change her ways if the marriage is to work. Claire does not fall for this line of reasoning. She knows she is not the devil James is making her out to be. She knows that she cannot be with him if he cannot see what he did wrong. Opening Line:” ”I’m sorry, you must think I’m very rude. We’ve hardly even been introduced and here I am telling you all about the terrible things that have happened to me.”

But what about the baby?’ I asked, stunned. He couldn’t possibly leave me but he especially couldn’t leave me now that we had had a baby together. ‘You’ve got to take care of the two of us.’ She meets Adam, one of her sister Helen’s college classmates who although a little older than the average college student, is still a little young for her, but he’s hot and she can’t help being drawn to him and he seems to have a fondness for her brand new baby. Claire is still heart-broken over her husband’s betrayal, but maybe she can find a way to see the good in mankind by befriending Adam. Claire discovers a lot about herself, about her marriage and finds out the truth about her husband and comes to a crossroads and makes a decision about the way she’s going to live her life and raise her daughter. Conversation should be curtailed. They are allowed to exchange a few words with any other prospective father pacing alongside them. I loved books. And I loved reading. And I loved men who reacl. I loved a man who knew his existentialism from his magic-realism. And I had spent the last six months working with people who could just about manage to read Stage magazine (laboriously mouthing the words silently as they did so). I suddenly realised, with a pang, how much I missed the odd bit of intelligent conversation.Not only is it a great story with funny, loveable characters, it made me laugh out loud * Stylist *