#projectplaces: Marian Keyes – The Mystery of Mercy Close

Though I’d heard a lot about them, I hadn’t read any of Marian Keyes’ books before; I chose this one as part of my own #projectplaces reading theme, and because it also fitted with Reading Ireland Month, organised by the wonderful Cathy Brown of 746books.com.

Previously my experience of Irish authors had been limited to Maeve Binchy, Edna O’Brien, Seamus Heany, Elizabeth Bowen and Molly Keane, all of whom I loved (and Iris Murdoch, with whom I’m sorry to say I have struggled.)  Keyes was a new departure, an author writing about modern life in an Ireland far different from the rural farms of Light A Penny Candle or the old country houses and Anglo-Catholic aristocrats of Good Behaviour.

Keyes’ characters aren’t salts of the earth; they are flawed human beings trying to make their way through the ups and downs of life in a country that has been transformed several times over since I first visited it in the 1970s.  It’s boomed, it's busted, and it’s risen again, albeit in more modest form.  And Keyes herself has had plenty of troubles, all of which she addresses in her books; she’s a recovering alcoholic, she’s no stranger to severe depression, and she has attempted suicide. Since 1995 Keyes has been chronicling it all in her bestselling novels.

In The Mystery of Mercy Close the financial crisis of 2008 has taken hold. The country is in the middle of a huge economic slump; there is no work, businesses are failing, houses are being repossessed, and Helen Walsh, unemployed private investigator, is about to hand over the keys to her little (and characteristically odd - her favourite paint colours include 'Agony', 'Gangrene' and 'Dead Whale'..) flat and move back in with her parents. On the way to their house she stops for petrol and sees a swarm of vultures hovering over the pumps. It is then that she realises that the mental illness she thought she had left behind forever is still hanging around, threatening to engulf her once again.

Helen needs work - not only to keep body and soul together, but also to keep her mind from falling apart.  She has a lovely new police detective boyfriend, Artie (who does at times seem a bit too good to be true – I felt he was one of the few weak characters in the book), but it’s her old one, the unfaithful and unscrupulous Jay Parker, who turns up offering her a job. An Irish boy band – Ladz  – is about to perform a string of comeback concerts. Some members need the money, some just miss the adulation. And at least one ‘Lad’ – Wayne – really doesn’t want to do this at all. When Wayne disappears just a few days before the first show, the heavily-invested Jay (who isn’t the only one desperate to find him) offers Helen big money to track Wayne down;

‘It wasn’t even the lure of the money that was sending my heart racing; it was the thought of having something to do…to keep me out of my own head.’

Against her better judgement, Helen agrees to give it a go, and the rest of the book is ostensibly about her search for Wayne – yet it’s about so much more than that.

It’s about aging pop stars and the differing fates of the mega successful (Bono gets a mention) and the slightly more ephemeral who have been led to believe that they too will be household names for life.

And it’s about what it’s like to have to move back in with your parents after living independently – Helen’s Daddy, and especially her celebrity-obsessed Mammy, are very funny;

‘“What are you doing here?”

 “I live here”

“You don’t. We got rid of you. We painted your room. We’ve never been happier”’

But Helen’s return highlights a more serious issue that’s become increasingly common; if adult children move back in, are they entitled to expect their parents to accommodate their wishes, to return to the routines they thought they had left behind? Why should they still be cooking three meals a day (the senior Walshes now live on cake and have their breakfast at Costa)?

It’s about families; Helen’s own sisters, who all seem more successful than her and all have their views on her unconventional lifestyle; Artie’s stylist ex-wife, the super cool Vonnie, and their equally beautiful children who inhabit a designer house full of ‘floating staircases and faraway skylights’ spend Quality Time with one another, play board games and eat fennel and Vacherin salads; the various set-ups of the Ladz, some now settled down with babies and starring on daytime TV, others still playing the field and stealing each other’s partners.

And of course it’s about our demons, how we manage, or fail to manage them, and how they can ambush us when we least expect them. In fact it’s Helen’s experiences in this area (some of which are extremely funny as well as tragic – Virginia Woolf may have walked into the Ouse with her pockets full of stones, but wait till you see Helen Walsh’s suicide-accessory of choice) and her empathy with Wayne that finally lead her to the end of the trail.

Helen is not an obviously likeable person. She’s neurotic, difficult, critical, unpredictable and prone to making idiotic decisions. It’s to Keyes’ credit then that before long we are rooting for her, even though we still long to give her a shake. Keyes doesn’t try to make us feel sorry for Helen; while she gives us excellent insight into the agony of someone struggling with mental illness, she’s also very clear on how challenging that person’s behaviour can be.

By the last chapter of The Mystery of Mercy Close I felt I knew Helen (and many of the other characters, so well-drawn are they), and though I’m not sure I’d be able to cope with her for very long in real life, did I want her to come out on top?  Of course I did.

The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes is published by Penguin.

Note: Marian Keyes has written novels focusing on the lives of each of the Welsh siblings; I’m now looking forward to reading the first, Watermelon, about Claire Walsh and what happens to her when her husband leaves her on the very day she gives birth.