Grown Ups: British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022

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There were too many characters to really care about any of them and I found it hard to keep them all straight. Should you live each second to the full, grabbing every opportunity and making as many precious memories as possible? The amount of balls dropped with these two characters alone is phenomenal, but they are just two in a cast of thousands. The standout child for me is Bridey who I think is hilarious and I love that she puts the adults in their place from time to time. A few missed out on her brilliant earlier novels because some critics were slow to catch up with what the rest of us knew – that wise, moving, clever and brilliantly written books were contained within the feminine covers.

Grown Ups: British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022 Grown Ups: British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022

There are approximately a million characters in this book, and complex relationships between family members and divorces and remarriages and friends—it was a little confusing along the way, but when I finished the book, I was sad to see this complicated clan go. Still, everything manages to stay under control--that is, until Ed's wife, Cara, gets a concussion and can't keep her thoughts or opinions to herself. Johnny married with grocery empire queen Jessie- my least favorite character likes to control people by over spending her money to earn their time and respect, looks like always gives you encouraging compliments: “Oh, you look fantastic this hippo costume!The families spend a lot of time together (Easter etc) but there are tensions simmering under the surface, second marriages, truculent teenagers, step-siblings, fears of inadequacy, etc. The end is good as Cara unwittingly forces them all to stop messing up their lives and embrace their problems and move on. Jessie, slowly bankrupting herself and husband Johnny with her largesse, frightened that if she doesn't pay for everything, the 'spensie' stuff, no one will love her. This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. When Cara Casey suffers concussion, she starts spilling the secrets of her glamorous, talented family.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes | Waterstones

Her last novel The Break was a perfect example of this, up there with the superlative Rachel’s Holiday as books which should — and probably would if they were written by a man — transcend whatever divide there is between popular and ‘literary’ fiction.But this - tonight - was as bad as Rory, that same light-headed combination of disbelief and stone-cold certainty: something terrible had happened.