Welcome to my review of WaterMelon By Marian Keyes. Unfortunately, this book has too much waffle even for me (I am usually very tolerant) so I found it to be an exceedingly long read, which wasn’t the most enjoyable. However, I have others of hers to read so will be trying some more in the near future and believe those are better.
Meet Claire Walsh.
On the day she gives birth to her first child, Claire’s husband James tells her he’s been having an affair, and that now’s the right time to leave her.
Right for who exactly?
Exhausted, tearful and a tiny bit furious, Claire doesn’t know what to do. So she decides to go back to basics . . . and runs home to Mum and Dad.
But it’s not the sanctuary she’d been hoping for. Juggling her sisters’ drama, her parents’ pity and the demands of a baby, Claire desperately misses the way things were. So when James gets back in touch, eager to put things right, Claire faces a choice.
Will she forgive and forget? Or can she find the courage to take a chance on herself, and start a life of her own?
Marian Keyes is the international bestselling author of Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Rachel’s Holiday, Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for Beginners, Angels, The Other Side of the Story, Anybody Out There, This Charming Man, The Brightest Star in the Sky , The Mystery of Mercy Close, The Woman Who Stole My Life, The Break and her latest Number One bestseller, Grown Ups. Her two collections of journalism, Making it up as I Go Along and Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition are also available from Penguin.
Watermelon follows the story of Clare, who is going through the most unimaginably horrible separation from her husband. Finally, James decides it’s a good time to leave her just hours after the birth of their first baby. A few days later, she returns home to Dublin and her family, where most of the story occurs.
While the plot shows the worst of some people and goes through this challenging time in Clare’s life, I didn’t find that I connected well with it. The writing is far too waffling, even for someone like me who always manages to write massively long essays and then spends days struggling to reduce them for a word count. Me, who often has verbal diarrhoea, a point of which took my friend two and a half hours to escape from last night despite spending the whole day together!
The characters are well developed but hidden under so many words and meandering thoughts that it felt challenging to remember the point. This felt like a very long read. Before I got to even 30%, I checked that percentage, wondering how much longer there was in the book, which is never a good thing for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, but I am a relatively quick reader, and this seemed too long.
Clare quite understandably goes through a depressive episode after her husband James leaves her but then suddenly emerges and moves on to someone who seems no better than her first husband. I felt sad that she didn’t feel her beautiful new daughter, Kate, was enough for her and that she didn’t feel she could just build a new life with her and the support of her slightly crazy but loving family. Kate is also the most perfect newborn in the history of the world! She wakes, eats and then sleeps for the rest of the day, leaving Clare to do as she wishes, which often includes a lot of TV and moping around before the new relationship.
If you can already tell, I found this a frustrating read. I wanted to scream at Clare and shake her to stop her from being so sad and pathetic. She is so weak and insecure that I had hoped the story would be about how she grows as a person and becomes strong for herself and her daughter; alas, this was not the case.
This was too much for me and has made me panic about her other books as I bought a bundle of all seven of the Walsh Family books to read one after the other. However, I am assured that Rachel’s holiday is one of her best ever books and that one is next on my list in this series. Still, I think I will be leaving a short gap before I start on that one, just in case it’s the same as this one!
| Title | WaterMelon |
| Author | Marian Keyes |
| Series | N/A |
| Format | Kindle |
| Page Count | 523 Pages |
| Genre | Romance |
| Publisher | Penguin |
| Release Date | 6th July 2017 |
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