Bokrecension: Like a watermelon av Marian Keyes

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The main characture, Claire, has just been left by her husband James the same day she gave birth to their first child, Kate. So he’s leaving Claire with a newborn baby, a broken heart, two extra stone and a birth canal ten times its normal size. In the absence of any better offers, the deserted wife and mother, returns to her family in Dublin, and after going through the required stages of "Loss, Loneliness, Hopelessness and Humiliation", begins to feel much better - so much better that when James tries to win his way back into her affections, he gets more than he bargained for.

After a short while they get married, and five years later they find themselves in a delivery room and this is the horrific scene we wittness:

"Hello Claire," he said formally and politely.
Fool that I was, I thought he was being grave and serious as some kind of mark of respect. (Behold my wife, she was delivered today of a child, she is woman, she is lifegiver -- you know, that kind of thing.)
He sat down. He sat on the edge of the hard hospital chair, looking as if he was going to get up and run away any second. Which, as it turns out, he was.
"Have you been to the baby ward to see her?" I asked him dreamily. "She''''s baeutiful."
"No I haven''''t," he said abruptly. "Look, Claire...I''''m leaving you."

Claire comes home to her family in Dublin. To her beautiful sister Helen, her soap-watching mother who couldn''''t cook, didn''''t clean, and wasn''''t particularly motherly, and the bewildererd father who cleaned the house, earned the money, but was whipped by all the women in his house.

One day Claire decides to cook dinner for the family - the lack of cooking ability gene skips a generation in their family. Besides getting cleand up and dressed in something other than her mother''''s hideous nightgowns, she cooks pasta pesto, but not too well, based on her mothers request, so as not to give her family''''s tastebuds the chance to latch onto something that isn''''t microwavable. Helen brings for dinner home the handsome Adam, who is between she and Helen in age. In other words, she thinks he''''s too young for her.

Adam is interested, both in Claire and her baby Kate. She''''s interested in him, and takes her mother''''s advice to pursue him even though Helen seems interested in him as well. Her mother believes it would be good for Helen to be disappointed in love for once, because she is not used to it. After a wonderful dinner that Adam had prepared for her, she returns home that night and her parents tell her that James has flown in to see her.

Does she go back to James or is she trying to forge a new path for herself? I will not tell you how the book ends. I want you to read it, becasue I think it’s a really good book.

The titel of the book you understand when you read it because Claire feels exacly like a watermelon when she is pregnant. Big, green and no sexy at all. I like the author’s style, she describes things very humorous and ironic, even in the most gravity situations. If I should grade Watermelon it would have 4 of 5 points.

I won''''t give away any more of the plotline except to say that Claire must make a decision about her life. Although author Keyes makes a valiant effort at showing us Claire''''s growth through her choices, it was unnerving to read a book where, essentially, the past five years of a lead character''''s life were a mistake, and a mistake that resulted in the birth of a child. Yes, there is a happy ending of sorts, albeit convuluted and fairly unbelievable, but it made me sad that she had apparently made such a bad decision on her choice of a man. The change in James from all-round good guy to self-righteous selfish bastard didn''''t ring true. Either he was like that all along and she missed it, or what?
It''''s the "or what" that ruined Watermelon for me, reminding me of phone calls with friends married to good men who, seemingly overnigh...