Grown Ups: British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022

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This book nails the joy and pain of the working world, celebrating the fun and thrill of ambition while exposing the most boring bits of office life with hilarious and devastating accuracy. She's the camera panning back on the set, not the character having to suffer the slings and arrows of familial banter.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes | Waterstones

Marian Keyes's books are hard to find in the United States now, although she did have a lot of her backlist published here at one point, and so Grown Ups may be a bit harder to find but it's worth it. This is a clever and funny read, it was too long ago to go into any detail, on looking back it seems I won this, and I don't even remember this being the case, oh dear. She's able to capture people acting in ways that are silly and frustrating in the framing of a sitcom. This novel is searingly insightful, and Keyes finds lightness in the darkest and most violent of emotions.

It’s utterly charming and highly entertaining – but the deeper themes will stay with you for the rest of your life. As a piece of work about addiction and recovery, the novel deserves to be considered alongside the work of Elizabeth Wurtzel and James Frey. The Casey brothers, Johnny, Ed and Liam, and their families get together regularly for important occasions, all through the flawless organisation of Johnny’s wife, Jessie. Their parents as we learn later in the book, are cold and verbally cruel so it’s the biggest wonder they are able to function at all.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes - Penguin Books New Zealand Grown Ups by Marian Keyes - Penguin Books New Zealand

We learn more about the family members’ background stories, resentments, dirty secrets, grudges, problematic obsessions, the things they hide behind the big family façade. I am always impressed when a book is over 600 pages and yet doesn't feel like it's an effort to read; the best sign of an engaging storyline. Now, I live in New Zealand, so I am going to throw Ngaruawahia at you, and see how you get on with pronouncing that.While some family secrets can be taken to the grave, unfortunately for the Caseys, things don't work out quite this way. It would be incredibly helpful to have a glossary of Irish terms, and a bit of a guide to pronunciation.