Watermelon

I am glad beyond words that Marian Keyes stepped up her writing game, because I have enjoyed a couple of her later titles, but this debut effort - even given that it's chick lit from the 90s - is excruciating. Unedited, overlong, full of clichés and stereotypes, and with possibly the most unlikeable narrator I have encountered in a while. And not in a good way - she's not ambitious, cunning or deliciously evil, because the author seems to think we're on her side - she's just a moaning wet fart of a middle class wifey whose life is defined by the men she can score. The husband who leaves her is forcefully, intentionally, brick to the face manipulative and self-serving, but so is Claire - they deserve each other, but I can also see why show more he would leave her (and not because he loved her so much but was too insecure, etc, as the endless dialogue insists).

This is a book of two halves, and at 520 pages can afford to stretch out, but both sides of Claire Webster are equally irritating. When we meet her, and I wish I hadn't, she has just given birth and been simultaneously dumped by her husband, who is running off with a neighbour. She is 'more of your fifties wifely type' who enjoys the missionary position and is oh so in love with her husband. He's so handsome and everyone must have envied her when they were out together! This is the first clue how narcissistic Claire really is, because she only ever values those qualities in James that make her look good. She's basically in love with herself, a trait she hilariously pins on her younger sister, and sees both her husband - and her baby daughter - as accessories. Oh yes, she's also a terrible mother, who refuses to breastfeed so she can keep her figure (to, you know, attract men) and regularly offloads her newborn infant onto her parents and sisters, after moving back home to Ireland to lick her wounds. All the while exclaiming 'I would kill anyone who tried to harm my baby!' (as she's drink driving with her child in a carrycot on the backseat - ah, the 90s!)

To bolster her confidence, after a week or two of by the book depression involving a granny nightgown and copious amounts of alcohol (not breastfeeding!), Claire goes after her younger sister's handsome 'friend' while dressed - somehow - in her college age sister's clothes. But it's not just sex, Adam is 'special'! They're practically soulmates! James who? ('So I latched onto the next available man who did make me feel good.') Suddenly she's no longer parroting that she's a married woman every five minutes, but becomes a 'modern' woman, sexy, funny, intelligent and independent ('and I had a man to impress') - we're told all this, there is absolutely no evidence. Keyes in training was a devoted fan of tell don't show. But then James reappears, wanting to patch things up while blaming Claire for making him leave - and we're supposed to be on Claire's side, although she's a bit slow on the uptake. But honestly, I could also see why James might have needed a break from his alcoholic 'life of the party' wife who presumably got pregnant to complete the aesthetic.

I would say that I stopped caring about the flat characters, but I never even started. The dialogue is repetitive and dull, to the point where I started skim-reading for any salient contributions ('The person who had the job of writing my life’s dialogue used to work on a very low-budget soap opera'), and the 'humour' is straight out of the 1970s, preserved in aspic - there's a lot of dad jokes ('Hijack!' the sisters always scream when their father, called Jack, enters the room - or they do it once, anyway) and inappropriate language (Claire calls Adam a paedophile for showing more interest in her daughter, hoho). Even the title is an example of how hilarious Claire isn't - she was the watermelon while pregnant, dressed in green and feeling sick. What??

I despaired of the whole pathetic, dated plot and cardboard characters, and only continued reading so I could spit venom in a review. And then I discovered that there was an adaptation starring Anna Friel and the late great Brenda Fricker, where the director completely shook up the plot to give Claire a personality and the story some action - she gets pregnant by Adam and then James finds out - and I don't know how that turned out, but I'm here for any changes that improve this disaster of a first novel even slightly. The BBC have also recently adapted the Walsh sister novels, but omitting, I think, Claire's boring story (which is originally why I looked up the book). Anyone with the same idea, who wasn't married and braindead in the 1990s - AVOID, DO NOT RECOMMEND! show less

Marian Keyes again. I keep coming back to her without knowing why. The first chapter drew me in straight away. Maybe that's why. The European-ness of the story is like a familiar taste you vaguely remember. And the depth of the people potrayed, combined with the extraordinary (for chick lit) length of her books make me pick them up. That, and the titles. Don't you just love her titles? I know I do. Having said that, I must say that this book is by far my favourite Marian Keyes so far. maybe it's because I could really relate to her predicament (minus the child, fortunately), so the final showdown between the heroine and her husband brought tears to my eyes. I may not always have been 100% convinced by her books, but I know I can't stop show more now. So the rest of her books have just elbowed themselves to the top of my to-read pile. show less

I wanted to like this book but simply could not get into it. The Walsh women are such irredeemable characters. Jack Walsh should have walked out long ago and left them to fend for themselves. I made it to page 333 before deciding life is too short to was on such horrible women. Yes, Jack, I am walking away as you should.

This is my second Marian Keyes book and while describing her books is difficult, reading them is definitely not. In Watermelon, a 27 year old girl finds her womanhood after her husband leaves her on the day their baby is born. Keyes has the most wonderful voice - full of passion, humor and a great sense of self.

I’ve just started exploring and enjoying chick-lit, but I don’t think I’ll be going back to this author- a shame because she’s very prolific! I hadn’t finished the book when I had to return it to the library and I wasn’t interested enough to renew.
The main character is unlikeable. She is in a horrible situation, her husband leaving her immediately after she gives birth, but I started to empathise with his decision after she spends the first half of the book being horrible to her loving family, drinking heavily and never showering or getting dressed, ignoring her friends, taking minimum care of her baby, did I mention the heavy drinking? Oh and calling herself a watermelon because she is ... gasp ... size 14. I’m size 14. show more So she’s saying I’m huge. Maybe I needed to see her before she became depressed so that I could care about her and know she wasn’t always so horrible. Didn’t care enough to finish. show less

So I have all of the Walsh Family books in paperback. I haven't read them in years, but decided to take the first two for a whirl this weekend. And now I wonder if I read this years ago and liked Claire or what? Cause Claire drives me a bit insane in this book. And when you read about how she changes over the course of the series, she ends up being the Walsh sister I dislike the most (tied with Helen and her book, "The Mystery of Mercy Close"). So good things I can say, the re-read went by fast and I loved the change in Claire, but it didn't really stick though. The not so good things, I see more flaws in this one upon re-read. The Walsh family is kind of nasty and not supportive. I thought that Claire too easily caved and was sitting show more around waiting for a man to save her. Also the whole why behind James's affair read as unbelievable to the extreme. I also thought that her romance came out of nowhere and ultimately didn't work.

"Watermelon" is the first book in the Walsh Family series by Marian Keyes. The first book deals with the oldest of the Walsh sisters, Claire. Claire is happily married to her husband James and living in London. She's expecting their first child any day now. When Claire goes into labor and gives birth to their daughter, James informs her that he's been having an affair and is leaving her for the other woman.

So there is Claire days post-partum with no husband which causes her to return home with her daughter to her family in Dublin, Ireland.

Most of the book deals with Claire depressed and upset (rightfully so) with wondering where did things go wrong with her husband. Keyes does a lot of switching between past events and the present day. I have to say that Claire was pretty much a mess. Her mother deals with the baby for the most part and the baby isn't even a thought I felt after a while. When Claire starts to feel tingles towards a man she meets I just hard sighed. And of course Claire's husband returns and I maybe sighed some more. So we get a love triangle which is one of the romance tropes I hate the most.

The other characters in this book are not developed very well. Claire's mother kind of sucks and isn't that supportive of her daughter actually kicking her lousy husband to the curb. Her two younger sisters, Anna and Helen sound exhausting. I would have ended up slapping Helen and trying to smother her. She's nasty and everyone seems to excuse it cause's she's small and gorgeous.

James was developed very well, but the real why behind the affair read as false to me. I scratched my head a few times because I couldn't remember that at all. James seemed to undergo a personality transplant that didn't work. Romance trope that I hate, make the guy who actually sounds awesome suddenly turn into a monster for plot reasons so heroine can be with the other guy.

The writing was okay, I was mostly bored though with the book after a while. I realized it was because that unlike with most of my favorite re-reads, I wasn't enjoying this one that much and since I knew the ending I was wondering why it was taking Keyes so long to get there. This is a pretty big paperback that I have (it's over 400 pages) and I am wondering about donating it since there are other series that I like a lot more and I don't want to wait another 10 years before picking this up again.

The ending was flat. I honestly wish that there had been additional conversations between Claire and James. Honestly I wish that Keyes had decided to focus in on them and not even bring in that other love interest. It was just a mess and the backstory of that guy had me sighing hard too. show less

3.5 stars

The day Claire has her first baby, her husband James tells her he’s been having an affair and he is leaving Claire. Devastated, Claire moves back to Dublin from London to live with her parents and two younger sisters while she tries to figure out where to go from here. Her youngest sister, Helen, is in college and one day brings home a friend, Adam.

Have to admit, I didn’t like Claire all that much, but there were humourous bits to the story and it was still enjoyable, overall. Actually, I’m not sure there were any characters I really liked much. Maybe Adam. Close to the end, it was a bit… odd and took some figuring out (as Claire was also figuring it out!). I did enjoy the book enough to put the next Walsh family book show more on my tbr. show less