I’m not usually a huge fan of “chick lit” authors, but Marian Keyes is one that I have always enjoyed. Her characters are lively and there is typically something going on in her books that is a little more serious. In some of her books there are women who are widowed, facing drug problems or dealing with other real issues that make it not quite as fluffy as some other books in the genre.
In This Charming Man the story is told by the perspective of four women in their early 30s. They have all been in some way connected to Paddy de Courcy, an Irish politician who is one of the most eligible bachelors around. Lola was his most recent girlfriend, finding out they were no longer together when the news announces his engagement to someone else. Grace is a journalist pursuing the story who knew Paddy in his younger days and has recently been reacquainted with him. Marnie, Grace’s sister, dated Paddy during high school and college. And Alicia, his current fiance.
All of the women have different voices and have different sentiments about Paddy during the story…however none of them seem to be able to get away from him. It turns out that Paddy is abusive towards the women he dates and he has left his mark, physically and emotionally, on all of these women.
Overall it was a good book. I did have a problem with the parts that were written in Lola’s voice because there were a lot of sentence fragments which I find distracting…and a little bit annoying. It’s not that I don’t write sentence fragments but it seemed like every sentence was not grammatically correct. I’m sure this was done to bring out Lola’s voice and personality, but I had a hard time getting past it and found myself speed reading her parts so that I didn’t have to look at it. Otherwise I enjoyed it and thought it was a good summer read.
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