I grazed at the Book Depository last week and came up with a newish Brit Chick Lit book, called "The Brightest Star In The Sky" by Marian Keyes. It'll go back on the shelves on Wednesday and, yes, I did stick it out, though the first couple of chapters were somewhat baffling.
There is, you see, a mystery narrator (MN). Although you guess the identity before long, you're meant to be a little confused until the last chapter, when you find out what MN's mission is. Then you wonder why you needed MN to hover around, commenting on stuff, rather obscurely.
The action mostly takes place in a building of flats in Dublin, where live a variety of quirky beings, mostly at odds with their life situations. Lydia drives a cab and tries to keep her mother from sinking into dementia, in between bouts of having wild sex with various good looking guys. Katie is forty and believes her life is on the fast track downhill, even though she is beautiful and sexy and liked by everyone who knows her except her mother. Jemima is 88 and dying of cancer. Her foster son, Fionn, is a babe magnet and as shallow as a mud puddle. Matt and Maeve, a married couple, once had a fine romance and now are getting fat and wearing sweat clothes to bed. All of these problems are explored and then solved by virtue of a car accident, a suicide attempt and an Act of God (in the Epilogue).
Ms Keyes has written a lot of novels and is probably a more-than-adequate, Irish replacement for Maeve Binchy. She certainly gets Chick Lit! I'm not fond of deus ex machinas to solve plot problems but, hey, it's escapist reading and I say go for it!
By the way, there is only one stargazing episode (because Dublin is a city and city air is polluted, making it hard to see the stars) and he's not really stargazing, he's standing on the sidewalk, peering into his downstairs neighbor's window. So we never find out why she chose this title.
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