POPULAR FICTIONWHOSE LIFE Is It Anyway? is Sinead Moriarty's fifth novel and it has bestseller written all over it. Niamh O'Flaherty is a hybrid, a Londoner born to Irish parents, who is happily living in Dublin. She writes a fluffy newspaper column that bears a striking resemblance to that of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and The City and she's taking her time finding her Mr Right. Then, all of a sudden, Niamh finds her perfect man in the form of sexy Pierre, a 41-year-old phonetics professor from Martinique, who swiftly beds her, claiming that one of the things he loves most about her is that she's funny.
Is this not the highest compliment a woman can be paid? Eh, no. Pierre's proposal of marriage after a whirlwind romance leaves Niamh with just one question - how will she tell her parents? Her folks are stereotypical emigrants, casually racist, more "Oirish" than the Irish, and they await the day Niamh tells them she's found a nice Irish husband. What ensues is Niamh's struggle to persuade her shamrock-wielding family that she will marry a man who is not only not Catholic, nor Irish, but who is black.
Surely, having raised a family in multi-cultural London these matters would be of little importance? We might also wonder why Niamh is so keen to have her parents' blessing as she is well past the age of consent and Pierre is staring middle-age in the face. Would a worldly-wise journalist and a university professor not be more inclined to present the wedding as a fait accompli? Moriarty does throw a few serious incidents into the mix, such as Niamh's sister's teenage pregnancy and the possibility that their cousin killed her alcoholic father, but the ultimate aim of the tale is a happy ending, which duly arrives. It's a pity the characters are drawn with such broad strokes as it becomes difficult to have any feeling for them, but it's still an entertaining read.
Kate Thompson's ominously titled Love Lies Bleeding, her eighth novel, is a whopper of a tome. Set in LA and Ireland but mostly in the laidback Languedoc, it tells the story of a group of people in various artistic pursuits whose lives are sent askew when the far-too beautiful Greta arrives to work as a "Nani Nua" to the jet-setting McDonagh-O'Dares, a couple who want to instil something of Irish culture in their children.
Unfortunately, the story rambles on, deeply in need of the intervention of an editor and not even scenes of fabulous people having fabulous sex or descriptions of idyllic settings alleviate the leaden pace.
The story of the publication of this book is at least as interesting as the book itself as Thompson published it initially online, retaining the resolution as a cliff-hanger in the last seven ostentatiously named "Clandestine Chapters". Readers bought these separately, printed on vellum, wrapped in ribbon, delivered to their door. Now New Island have published the novel in full. There's a happy ending if ever there was one.
• Claire Looby works in the advertising department of The Irish Times