You're listening to Love Stories with me, Dolly Alderton, a series in which I talked

to guests about their most defining relationships, the passion, heartbreak, longing, familiarity

and fondness that has formed who they are.

My guest this week is the writer Marianne Keys.

Her books such as Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is getting married and this charming man

are in the canon of the modern woman's literary identity and have sold over 35 million copies.

Her books explore a cross-section of humanity, looking at themes of love, bereavement, family,

men and women, feminist issues, mental health and addiction and have been translated into

33 languages, a testament to the universality of her work.

But no matter how dark the subject matter, she approaches it with her signature warmth,

humour and through her wildly flawed but deeply lovable, relatable female characters.

Her latest book, The Break, published in paperback by Penguin on May 31st poses the question

of how to make long-term love last.

In areas she's had some experience in.

Break came about when I read a couple of articles.

Now this is a few years ago, maybe four or five years ago, newspaper articles about

how monogamy is changing because of our increased life expectancy.

You see the fact that now we're expected to live till at least 90 means that people say

who are in their 30s or their 40s and they're very happy with their person and they don't

kind of have any intention of engine it with them.

They're looking at another maybe 50 or 60 years with them and they're getting the fear.

This is what people were saying in the articles and it was different in the days where you

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