Watermelon: The riotously funny and tender novel from the million-copy bestseller (Walsh Family)

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Not only is it a great story with funny, loveable characters, it made me laugh out loud * Stylist *

Osman presenting Pointless with Alexander Armstrong in 2009, the year it first aired. Photograph: Guy Levy/Brighter Pictures La protagonista no se siente guapa ni se acepta a si misma hasta que adelgaza de forma NADA sana porque tiene una depresión enorme y se le quitan las ganas de comer. Luego adelgaza y ya se siente guapa y entonces puffff ya mágicamene no hay depresión Why were you at the birth, if you planned to leave me the minute it was over?’ I asked him, holding his arm, trying to get him to look at me. Anyway, I had managed to land myself a job as a waitress in this highly trendy London restaurant, all loud music and video screens and minor celebrities. You’ve got to write books you would read,” Osman says. “I wanted to write an intelligent book that was very accessible. That’s not in a cynical way. I make television and if I’m proud of something I want the maximum number of people to enjoy it. My natural instinct has been to write something that people will take to their hearts.”

Through meetings and discussions with James, and meetings and talks with Adam, Claire makes her decision. She decides she will leave James for good. She will work on building a love relationship with Adam. James will not accept responsibility for the affair he had. He says that Claire, through her demands on him and selfishness, drove him to have an affair. He won't admit that he was wrong. He turns the tables and makes it like he is a victim, and that Claire must change her ways if the marriage is to work. Claire does not fall for this line of reasoning. She knows she is not the devil James is making her out to be. She knows that she cannot be with him if he cannot see what he did wrong. The casual observer might still think it was James. But I knew from looking at his eyes, my James had left. Some cold unloving stranger was in his body. I didn’t know where my James had gone.

And managed to secure another position with more regular hours. So our romance proceeded on a more traditional timetable. Watermelon, Marian Keyes's very first novel, tells the extremely funny and wonderfully touching tale of a woman who thought she had it all - until the day she discovers that it's all gone . . .

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Her bestselling second novel, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married, is adapted into a TV series, and in 2003 Watermelonis made into a TV film starring Anna Friel (above). Keyes’s books go on to sell more than 35m copies worldwide. No tengo la cita exacta pero la protagonista tenía celos de que la gente anoréxica sea capaz de no comer porque ella no tiene ese "self-control" HELLO? WTF? EXCERPT: February fifteenth is a very special day for me. It is the day I gave birth to my first child. It is also the day my husband left me. As he was present at the birth, I can only assume the two events weren't entirely unrelated. What the hell do you mean?’ I shouted. ‘He’s already married. To me. I hadn’t heard that they had made polygamy legal in the last day or so.’ Osman’s father left when he was nine. Everyone was very “English” about it; the first he knew of any difficulties was when his father called him into the living room and told him he was leaving. His mother became a primary school teacher: people still call out “Hello, Mrs Osman” when they walk around Haywards Heath. She would stuff envelopes in the evenings to bring in extra money, but shielded him and his brother from any sense of financial hardship or sadness. Addiction can be work or power, or whatever you need to cover up your shame and to run from your trauma Richard Osman

Joyful. Keyes' clever way with words and extraordinary wit. People stared at me as I laughed to myself' C.L. Taylor

Publication Order of Walsh Family Books

Have you read it?’ he asked, obviously surprised, the tone of his voice actually implying ‘can you read at all?’ Of all the Tex-Mex joints in all the towns in all the world, he had to walk into mine. I wasn’t a real waitress, you understand, I had a degree in English, but I went through my rebellious stage rather later than most, at about twenty-three. Which is when I thought it might be a bit of a laugh to give up my permanent, pensionable wellish-paid job in Dublin and go off to the Godless city of London and live like an irresponsible student. ABOUT THIS BOOK: Claire has everything she ever wanted: a husband she adores, a great apartment, a good job. Then, on the day she gives birth to their first baby, James informs her that he's leaving her. Claire is left with a newborn daughter, a broken heart, and a postpartum body that she can hardly bear to look at. And then James smiled at me, a slow, sexy smile, a knowing kind of smile, totally at odds with the pin-striped suit he was wearing, and I swear to you, my entrails turned to warm ice cream. You know, kind of hot and cold and tingly and … well…like they were dissolving, or something. James didn’t treat me in any of these unpleasant ways. It seemed almost too good to be true. He liked me. He liked almost everything about me.

The problem was everything between the beginning and the end. Very little happened. I didn't enjoy the endless days Maggie spent hanging out doing n0thing (the zero instead of o is quite intentional). MY THOUGHTS: I have had a love/hate relationship with the Walsh family series. I loved Watermelon; my sides ached from laughing when I first read it, and then read it again regularly over the years. I detested Rachel's Holiday. Just. Did. Not. Like. It. One. Little. Bit. I had high hopes for Angels, #3 in the series. Loved the beginning, but our relationship went downhill from there, and even though the ending was almost decent, by then I was over it. I’ve been with James for five years, and we’ve been married for three years. And, my God, but I love that man. For all my talk of independence, I was actually a very romantic person at heart. And for all my talk of rebellion, I was as middle-class as you could get. And like Scarlett O’Hara in the last few lines of Gone With The Wind, I said plaintively, ‘I’ll go home. I’ll go home to Dublin.’So what was I to do? I didn’t even know where he was staying. But some instinct told me to leave him alone for a while. Humour him. Pretend to go along with it. During her appearance on Desert Island Discs in March 2017, Keyes told the host that "[by] conditioning women to think that what they find empowering or valuable is worth less than what men consider to be worthwhile, women are prevented from reaching for parity and the gender gap in power and money between men and women is kept in the favour of men". [11] MY THOUGHTS: This was the first book by Marian Keyes that I ever read. I read it quite some time after she had made a name for herself with Rachel's Holiday. The first time I read Watermelon, and there have been several readings over the years, I was enamoured by Keyes' writing. Warm and witty, it was like sitting down and having a good gossip session with your best friend and a bottle of wine. . . 'And did you hear about Claire?....No? Well, James has only gone and left her, and with a brand new baby. . . And you'll never guess who he left her for. . .' McGreevy, Ronan (16 October 2019). "Marian Keyes becomes first Irish writer to donate digital archive". The Irish Times . Retrieved 16 September 2021. In 2021 and 2022, Keyes joined Tara Flynn in a series for BBC Radio 4 called 'Now You're Asking', in which they discussed problems sent in by listeners (they called them 'askers').