Marian Keyes

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2017

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer Marian Keyes. Her twelve novels to date have sold 35 million copies and are published in 33 languages. Some of her novels have been adapted for the screen. She has also published three volumes of journalism. Marian was born the eldest of five children in Ireland in 1963. While she was academically successful at school, she says she wasn't taught to think for herself, which left her ill prepared for university where she studied law. After completing her degree, but failing to get apprenticed to a law firm in Dublin, she moved to London. She spent her twenties working as a waitress, and began drinking heavily. She went into rehab for her alcoholism when she was 30. Her fortunes changed once she was sober: she sent some short stories she had written the previous year off to a publisher and had her debut novel published in 1995. Marian has described each of her books as "a comedy about something serious" and says they are a reflection of who she is: "I'm very bleak, really melancholic. But I've always used humour as a survival mechanism. I write for me and I need to feel hopeful about the human condition. So no way I'm going to write a downbeat ending. And it isn't entirely ludicrous to suggest that sometimes things might work out for the best." Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.2	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:04.9	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:09.5	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio Broadcast.
0:13.9	For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk-radio4.
0:30.4	Music
0:40.4	My cast away this week is the writer Marian Kies, author of a dozen best-selling novels,
0:46.4	her writings modern and witty and pacy, with a pitch-perfect year for dialogue and a
0:51.6	swinging eye for detail. She creates what's glibly categorised as popular fiction,
0:57.6	well given that she has sold over 35 million books, that is strictly speaking accurate.
1:03.5	But the light and breezy marketing surrounding her work doesn't quite tell the full story,
1:08.8	but then paradox has been her long-term companion.
1:12.2	Born in Limerick, she says she grew up in a big loving happy family.
1:16.0	Yet by the time she was 30, she was alcoholic and suicidal.
1:20.8	Then along with her sobriety came her success. She says,
1:24.8	I was born without the rulebook. When everyone else was at a briefing on how to deal with life,
1:29.6	I must have been off looking at shoes or something. I never felt comfortable in my own skin,
1:34.4	so welcome Marian Kies. Thank you.
1:37.6	I tried there as I do to sort of sum up the trajectory of your life, but as a writer and listening
1:43.5	with your writers here and knowing yourself better than I can ever know you, what would you say about
1:47.7	yourself? Oh, um, chatty Irish woman writes chatty Irish books.
1:54.3	And has been very lucky. That's succinct, but maybe not the whole story.
	...

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