“I would never have been a writer if I had still been drinking”

Best-selling author Marian Keyes said she would never have become a writer if she hadn’t gotten sober 30 years ago.

The Irish writer, behind books including This Charming Man and The Break, told the Hay Festival audience: “I wouldn’t have had the discipline or the confidence.”

But she joked: “I came into the writing business with luck (of material).

“I suffer from depression, I have very frizzy hair and I was addicted!”

She added: “I went to rehab and learned a lot about myself. It taught me a lot about surviving in a painful world.”

Keyes, whose hundreds of fans strained to hear her over the background noise of a very heavy downpour at the literary event, said rehab also helped her cope with the inevitable setbacks of life and had made it “much more positive”.

While she grew up in a loving family with “a fabulous mother”, Keyes said people joked that “any Irish mother caught giving her child self-esteem was stripped of her citizenship “.

She thinks part of this attitude comes from Catholicism: “You’re born and already a sinner…God is always looking at you. It’s impossible to feel like you’re not wrong all the time.”

She added that Irish women were raised to believe that they should “never complain or raise their heads above the parapet”.

“I love how it’s changed and how young Irish writers, women, are so different.”

Keyes also recognized the strong tradition of storytelling in Ireland which shaped his education and, subsequently, his career.

“It’s a cliché to say that all Irish people are storytellers, but my mother is a fantastic storyteller,” she said.

“Humor was how we were valued at home. You had to be funny. Every bad thing that happened to us, I learned that bad thing plus 20 minutes meant a funny anecdote!”

But she added that there are also larger, external reasons for this tradition.

“We were colonized for so long, we weren’t allowed to speak our language, we couldn’t own property, we weren’t allowed to educate ourselves, we weren’t allowed to practice our religion There was very little left, it was mainly music and words are our survival.

“And as soon as the colonizers left, the Catholic Church entered the void. We are constantly trying to be free.”

His own way of using words is adored by his legions of fans, largely due to his talent for tackling dark subjects such as depression, addiction and infertility – all of which Keyes has experience with – with humor and relevance.

His book Grown Ups is currently being adapted into a TV series for Netflix: “It would be so, so great if they could use people who could do Irish accents properly. They don’t have to be Irish.

“I’d also like to make an appearance, and my mom wants one too. The best place we could be would be a pharmacy because we’re in poor health!”

Graham Norton once noted that “she uses humor like a Trojan horse, into which she smuggles all sorts of difficult issues.”

Her latest book, My Favorite Mistake, is no different.

It’s a sequel to his 2006 novel, Anybody Out There?, where we reunite with high-flying public relations executive Anna Walsh, one of the Walsh sisters, who first appeared in Keyes’ debut, Watermelon.

Having something of a mid-life crisis (while struggling with perimenopause), Anna leaves New York and returns to her native Ireland, exhausted.

Keyes jokes: “Manhattan is not a place for the weak or the young. You need a bucket of B vitamins to live there!”

Anna soon finds herself battling an old flame (Joey) and embroiled in a criminal investigation at a coastal vacation home.

It doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, but it’s peppered with Keyes’ jokes and hilarious encounters.

“Midlife crises can happen. There is a phase in everyone’s life…I realized I had lived more years than I would ever live. When they told me I ‘were going to die one day, they weren’t really lying!

“All these things I had been putting off for a day. That day is now.

“Anna ran into perimenopause and again, when that happened to me, I was like, ‘Me? Me? Did this happen to me? I’m not ready for this.”

Reviews have been largely positive, with Marianka Swain of the Telegraph giving it four starsand Francesca Steele of the Independent describing it as “a novel about the turbulent Walsh family touches every middle-aged person”.

The Guardian’s Hephzibah Anderson said Keyes’ book would make her money “long overdue in more arrogant literary circles: respect”.

Keyes says she had originally planned to write a 40-year opus, but decided to write a love story in the wake of the pandemic.

“I wanted to comfort myself and retreat to a happy place.

“I wanted it to be middle-aged people because people fall in love at any age. They (Anna and Jamie) hurt each other. They both did bad things. I wanted it to be a realistic story; you can’t get to a mid-life relationship without things you’re really ashamed of.

Although her work is often considered light romance, Keyes says that “it doesn’t bother her anymore” and that “the perception of me has changed.”

“There will always be people who consider me an unforgettable moss and that’s fine. What bothers me is when a woman writes about a relationship or a family, it’s considered moss, but if a man does it, it’s considered much more significant I’m afraid it’s just part of the patriarchy.

“All we can do is keep trying, keep pushing, and have women recognize within themselves our own internalized misogyny and stand against it.”