WHATBOOK..? MARIAN KEYES

Novelist and essayist

… are you reading now?

STRICTLY Between Us by Jane Fallon. I love Fallon, she’s in a category all of her own — her books are great fun and her characters are fabulous, believable women who take no nonsense.

The plot is so juicy: it’s about trapping a cheating man and it’s told from the points of view of two women who were friends, but one of them has developed an agenda all of her own. It’s fun, clever, warm and utterly un-putdownable.

… would you take to a desert island?

SOMETHING long! Maybe A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. People have raved about it, and I’m definitely interested, but I’m daunted by the length (I believe it’s something like 1,000 pages).

But seeing as I’d have nothing else to do but look out for passing ships, I’d be grateful for every single page.

… gave you the reading bug?

ENID BLYTON — I loved her books, particularly the Malory Towers and Twins At St Clare’s series.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why any child would love books about boarding schools, but I devoured them. As well as nurturing a secret hope that I’d been adopted by my middle-class Irish parents and it was only a matter of time before my real — posh, English — parents showed up and whisked me back to the Thirties and shoved me into a boarding school.

… left you cold?

I REALLY don’t like being negative about books but, if you insist, I have to admit I wasn’t wild about The Widow by Fiona Barton.

It’s being hyped as the new The Girl On The Train, but I had big trouble with the main character — she’s meant to be in her late 30s but she seems more like a woman in her 70s. She’s never been on the internet, Facebook, etc.

It was hard to swallow and hard to take seriously. But, in all fairness, the plot was compelling.