Interview with Marian Keyes, 2006

Anybody Out There? revisits the hugely popular Walsh family, this time focusing on the youngest sister, Anna. Marian loves New York, where the book is partly set, and often travels over there to visit her sister, and good friend, Ann Marie Scanlon, another writer. Anna in the book works as a pr in the beauty business, a job which mirrors Marian’s own life and ‘other job’ as a beauty journalist. ‘When I was doing research I went into some of the beauty companies’ offices,’ Marian explains. ‘In the Clinique office there’s a whole room full of products. I nearly passed out. The greed that came over me,’ she laughs. ‘But I am lucky, I get sent a lot of make up and I use some of it and give some of it away.’

Will there ever be a book about the last Walsh sister, Helen? ‘Helen’s different,’ Marian says. ‘She has a core of steel and I don’t find people like that easy to write about. I write about damage or vulnerability. I have ideas about Helen all right. I’m thinking of doing a comic detective novel, but adding a much more serious dimension to it by doing a dual narrative. One part would be very light hearted and very ‘Helen’. And then there’d be a more serious one about a neighbour that had been raped and her story. The stories would be linked. It’s something I’ve thought about but it’s a way down the road yet - not the next novel. Maybe the one after though.’

Her Australian tour will take her the length and breath of the country, but she hasn’t tired of travelling yet. ‘I love it,’ she enthuses. ‘Tony, my husband, comes with me, I wouldn’t go without him. I love the evening readings, meeting the real readers. Proper fans. I just have a blast. It’s so heart warming and encouraging and humbling.’ The only thing she finds difficult is the jet lag. ‘It sends me mad and makes me physically sick,’ she says. ‘The North American tour is very, very tough. You’re on a seven am flight every day and a different city every night.’ Is there left anywhere in the world she’d like to visit? ‘Brazil,’ she says without hesitation. ‘I’ve been invited twice and both times it’s clashed with other things. I’d love to go.’

To keep her readers in touch, Marian has recently started posting a diary or ‘blog’ on her website, www.mariankeyes.com. In it she bares her soul to her readers and gives them an insight into her life. Isn’t she afraid of giving too much away? ‘For years I resisted doing it (a blog) because I felt I couldn’t take on yet another commitment,’ she says honestly. ‘I thought if I never started a blog I wouldn’t let people down or disappoint them. But it’s been tremendously easy. I don’t edit it at all, it’s very stream of consciousness. I just lash it out, like I was talking to a friend I haven’t talked to in a month.’

Marian’s readers email her through the website and she or Tony reply to every single person. ‘It’s lovely to have the contact,’ she says. ‘It’s important if they’ve made the effort to write, that I write back. I’m so touched. And from such places - Singapore, India, Nigeria. For me it’s wonderful as well to have that connection with people in far-flung countries. It’s so rewarding.’

As well as writing her novels, Marian does four monthly columns for magazines, including a new one for ‘The Bookseller’. She also recently appeared on Celebrity Big Brother’s panel of experts with Dermot O’Leary. ‘I think he is the most lovely man,’ she says. ‘A decent, good person. Everyone who works there loves him, which is rarely the case.’ But Marian didn’t like the programme this time around. ‘I thought it was really dark and there were so many truly horrible people on it that it upset me. There was no feel good factor.’

What does Marian think of celebrities like Jordan and Jodie March who have been signed up to write novels? ‘Good luck to them,’ she says magnanimously. ‘You make a living whatever way you can. But I think they’ll be surprised how difficult it is,’ she adds.

Marian is quick to point out that she doesn’t see herself as a celebrity at all. She lives a very ordinary life outside the book tours and book publicity. ‘I don’t feel like a celebrity at all.’ She smiles. ‘I don’t buy into the whole celebrity thing. Because of me, with the whole not drinking thing (Marian is a recovered alcoholic), it’s important for me to be grounded and I really value friendship and the love of my family. I’m so close to my family.’

So what’s next for Marian? ‘I’ve started work on a new one, ‘This Charming Man’. It’s been such a pleasure to write. One of the stories, Lola’s, is written in diary form, like my blog! I always find if I do something I don’t want to do, like the blog I always get something back from it.’

This interview first appeared in Woman’s Way, 2006