Popular Fiction: Before Bridget Jones began her diary and Marian Keyes gave us Watermelon, Dubliner Patricia Scanlan had already burst successfully onto the Irish literary scene with her début novel, City Girl. The former librarian has since blazed a trail as a respected pioneer of Irish romantic fiction and Two For Joy is her 10th novel.
In the village of Kilronan, the successful, if reserved, builder, Oliver Flynn, is getting married to needy Noreen following a proposal which she can't help wishing hadn't come from her. Oliver's mother, Cora Flynn, a textbook over-protective Irish Mammy, boycotts the wedding, while on the day itself Oliver tries to convince himself that true love is just something that happens in films.
The wedding sets off a chain of events - local girl Heather Williams dumps her inattentive boyfriend, Neil, and her obnoxious, social-climbing cousin, Lorna Morgan, persuades the newly single girl to move to the big smoke - which affects the lives of these characters as they travel from Dublin to London to New York and back, inevitably, to the sleepy lakeside village of Kilronan.
Scanlan has maintained her signature down-to-earth writing style and the action is largely dialogue driven. From the opening line, "Don't you dare do it before I do, Heather Williams", Scanlan lets her characters do the talking and it's these characters - the ambitious bitch, the insecure doormat, the hard-working workaholic, that Irish Mammy - who keep fans turning the pages.
If we wanted to quibble it might be with some of the dialogue attributed to these well-drawn characters, which sometimes doesn't ring true. Do 19-year-old Irish women really say "panties" instead of knickers, for example? Would a thirtysomething Irish woman talk about "courting" her boyfriend?
But elsewhere in the book there is heartbreaking authenticity in her observations about issues such as marital breakdown or infertility and it's a pleasure to get pulled along in the lives of these characters, wondering where and with whom they will end up.
The answers, when they come, are never earth-shattering, but are as innocently comforting as the electric blankets and soothing mugs of hot chocolate that feature so prominently in this easy-to-read tale. And that, one suspects, is what keeps the Scanlan faithful coming back for more.
- Roisin Ingle is an Irish Times journalist
Two For Joy By Patricia Scanlan Bantam Press, 480pp, €19.99
