This Charming Man by Marian KeyesFour women, all charmed by the same man at one time or another in their lives. Meet Paddy de Courcy, the "John F. Kennedy" of Dublin,Ireland. Then meet Lola, Grace, her twin sister Marnie and Alicia whose engagement to Paddy starts this ball rolling.Meet Lola first - her voice is written in the style of a diary or journal and is written in a type of short hand. The fact that it was extremely annoying to read this style aside, we learn very early how Lola,was devastated by Paddy's cruel way of breaking things off...thus we learn early on not to expect too much "charm" and a lot of cruelty from this man. Then comes Grace, a reporter and the strength of both her family and this story...then Marnie who we quickly learn is an depressed,alcoholic with suicidal tendencies, and also Grace's twin sister, and interspersed in bits and pieces in this story is Alicia, Paddy's new fiancee. To tell the truth I didn't really enjoy this novel, I found the women for the most part to be weak willed and naive...something that we do learn came from the hands, literally, of Paddy. And when it is time to dole out justice for what he's done, they turn to blackmailing him instead of going to the police. I had a major issue with this fact. If this was written for some sort of comic relief,to balnce the horrors of the rest of the book, it was in very poor taste. Perhaps in Ireland things are much different for women to be able to get justice from an abuser, even if he was a politician (or perhaps I'm just being naive?), but as an American woman in the 21st century, I found what they did to him to be false, childish, unbelievable and intolerable . I think that this was supposed to be of the "Chick-Lit" genre, but since it tackled such difficult subjects as alcoholism, depression, and terrible abuse against women, I was appalled at the flippant way this novel ended. yes he did get his just desserts, just not the way I would have liked to see it happen. Very Chick-Lit ending to a very deep subject matter..
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