Introducing the Walsh-family Novels
Introducing the Walsh-family Novels
And why (at the moment) I'm more interested in Marian Keyes' series than her stand-alones
If you’re a fan of Marian Keyes you’ll already know the Walsh family. They’re easy to fall in love with and hard to forget. But even if you’re a really committed fan, you may not have taken the time to think about how all the books about this family sit together as a series. That’s what this post is about. But before I get into it, I want to talk a little bit about Marian’s other novels — by which I mean the ones that stand alone.
Books with sovereignty
Nine of Marian’s fifteen novels exist within their own fictional world and aren’t meant to be interconnected. They Stand Alone. It’s a funny way of putting it, isn’t it? But this is the way it seems to be described in the publishing industry. The idea of a book that stands alone always makes me think of Irish nationalism, probably because it puts me in mind of the political party Sinn Fein (which translates into English as ‘Ourselves Alone’). In my mind, these stand-alone books will always be the zealous, extremist, single-issue novels. But what happens when that single issue is resolved? Cries the moderate reader. What happens then?
You’ll have to forgive me for thinking like this. I can’t help it; it’s because I’m Northern Irish. I grew up in Derry in the 1980s and 1990s, and I’ve been carefully trained to view everything through the lens of a political situation (which translates into Northern Irish as ‘pallidicul sit-yew-ay-shun’) that everyone is always insisting has only two sides. Doing my bit for the Peace Process, I spent my youth making community street theatre about peace and reconciliation. The narrative of these performances was always the same:
There are two tribes. (Usually wearing blue face paint – no idea why.)
They build a wall. (Made from a wooden frame and a big strip of fabric. You know, kind of like a sail or a giant kite.)
They fight.
Then they stop.
They agree to push the wall over. (That’s a relief. The wind’s been trying to blow it away this whole time.)
They all live in peace.
THE END
This atavistic narrative is buried under the layers of my skin like a splinter. It may never fully work its way out.
So, it’s not that I have a problem with these Marian Keyes books that are sovereign unto themselves. I’ve read them all. More than once. And I can see the readerly appeal of them. The beauty of this kind of book is that you can slip into someone else’s story for a short while and then slip back out again: no commitments, no responsibilities, no loose ends that need to be tied up. But the thing is that I actually quite like having commitments and responsibilities and my whole life is one big tangle of loose ends. Maybe that’s why I don’t have the same depth of relationship with these stand alones as I do with the Walsh-family novels.
The Marian Keyes stand-alone novels are (in chronological order): Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married (1996); Last Chance Saloon (1999); Sushi for Beginners (2000); The Other Side of the Story (2004); This Charming Man (2008); The Brightest Star in the Sky (2009); The Woman Who Stole My Life (2014); The Break (2017); Grown Ups (2020).
Books with a sense of community
The other six of Marian Keyes’ fifteen books are all about the Walsh family. They weren’t meant to be a series — at least not initially. Watermelon (1995), the first of the Walsh-family novels, was also Marian’s debut novel. She had sent off some of her short stories to Poolbeg Press in Ireland, they had (of course!) responded with a great deal of enthusiasm and asked to see her novel. So, she wrote Watermelon.
The rest, it would seem, is happenstance. It just so happens that Claire Walsh, the narrator of Watermelon, is — like Marian herself — the eldest of five siblings. And it just so happens that — unlike Marian — Claire’s siblings are all women. This is how it came to be that, gradually, one by one, each of the Walsh sisters became the protagonist of their own novel. Rachel, the middle sister, jumped the queue in Rachel’s Holiday (1997). Then Maggie, the second eldest, came next with Angels (2002). Then Anna, second youngest, in Anybody Out There? (2006). And finally Helen, the youngest (as well as being the most beautiful and most ruthless) of the sisters, got her own book in The Mystery of Mercy Close (2012). These novels came out over the course of nearly twenty years and followed the Walsh family as they matured and developed and as the Dublin (and sometimes London and New York and LA) that they lived in changed around them.
With each new Walsh-family book that was released, readers got a chance to know the family better. And, as each sister complicated the narratives told in previous books by giving us their side of the story, all the chaotic and dysfunctional glory of the Walshes unfolded. Individually, the books are pleasurable and satisfying and complete. Together, they are the very best long-running soap opera ever.
One of the things I love most about the Walshes is that they are very much a matriarchal family. Let me introduce you:
Their figurehead, Mammy Walsh, never cooks but always keeps the freezer stocked with Magnums (the ice-cream kind, not champagne); she watches all the soaps, reads all the magazines, and loves a Harrison Ford film; she also wears ‘the smile of a woman whose husband has done the hoovering for the past fifteen years’ (Watermelon, 53).
Daddy Walsh is long-suffering and entirely outnumbered by women who don’t want to talk about rugby, but nevertheless takes on the majority of the emotional labour (as well as the hoovering). Nearly every Walsh-family novel sees Daddy Walsh face the same two challenges: 1) he usually has to talk to one of his daughters about her feelings, and 2) he has to speak to one of his daughters on the phone. He always rises to the challenge without complaint.
Claire Walsh (b. 1964) is the eldest of the Walsh sisters and a bit of a party animal. She is strong-willed and fashion-forward and nothing can stop her from doing whatever she takes a notion to do. She gets divorced in Watermelon, but now has a long-term partner Adam. She has vowed never to marry him. Claire and Adam parent three children between them, Kate (from Claire’s marriage), Molly (from Adam’s former relationship) and Francesca (from their relationship with one another).
Maggie Walsh (b. 1969) is regarded by the others as dutiful and boring and a bit of a lick-arse. She’s actually extremely independent-minded, silly, kind and very resilient. She has an extremely healthy and loving relationship with her husband Garv, with whom she has two children, JJ and Holly.
Rachel Walsh (b. 1971) is charismatic and a deep thinker. She has been sober and drug-free since Rachel’s Holiday and her love interest Luke is so ‘dark and sexy and testosteroney’ (Anybody Out There?, 9) that everyone in the Walsh family is sexually attracted to him — except Helen.
Anna Walsh (b. 1974) is a floaty, kooky kind of person who believes in ghosts and is interested in spirituality. She had a reputation within her family for being unreliable and the kind of person who might go to the shop ‘to buy a Lilt’ and then decide ‘on a whim to skipper a boat around the Greek islands’ (Anybody Out There?, 54). But then she pulled her socks up, moved to New York and started working in sales for a big beauty company. She has an ex-boyfriend Shane, who broke her heart in Angels, and she’s the widow of Aidan from Boston.
Helen Walsh (b. 1977) is so beautiful that everyone falls in love with her. She is also an absolute wagon and you couldn’t trust her as far as you could throw her — she has Mammy Walsh’s heart scalded most of the time. But then she becomes a private detective and falls in love with Archie, who has three children from his former marriage, Iona, Bruno and Bella.
The Walsh-family books talk to each other and not just in superficial, citational ways; they really draw one another into difficult, serious and important conversations. Each Walsh book that has been published has caused me to reconsider the one I read before. And, because of the way they’re written as first-person, confessional narratives, they make their readers part of the conversation too. I think that these are books that insist upon the possibility — the necessity — of community. When I read one of the Walsh family novels, I have the feeling that I am participating in something bigger and more important than my own personal, individual experiences. In a very real social and political sense, these books make me feel connected.
The Walsh family continue to offer such rich material for comedy, drama and pure joy; it’s no surprise that Marian Keyes has returned to them herself. Twenty-five years after Rachel’s Holiday (1997) first came out, she published the sequel Again, Rachel (2022). It’s now been eighteen years since Anybody Out There? (2006) was published and I, for one, can’t wait to see what happens next for Anna, when the follow-up My Favourite Mistake comes out on 11 April 2024.