By Megan Thomas
Amy Heydenrych, Qarnita Loxton, Pamela Power and Gail Schimmel are all excellent South African authors whose books I’ve loved over the years, so it was particularly exciting when news broke that they were writing a book together (and very fun trying to guess who was writing which character, which I think I nailed).
The premise is somewhat unusual but very cute: the authors were meant to meet Marian Keyes at the Franschhoek Literary Festival but then, well, Covid. So, they decided to write a book about four people who connect through a mutual love of Marian’s books and a joint effort to try to meet her at the festival.
The four characters meet online in a Marian Keyes South African fan group on Facebook: Matt, a young man from Johannesburg finishing his studies and still heavily dependent on his parents; Jess, the local clientele of Tasha’s Hyde Park who has a lot more to her than the yummy mummy lifestyle she’s trying desperately to project despite there not being any money left; Ginger, a widowed mother of two adult daughters who is realising who she is outside of the not-so-catch-all “widowed mother” description; and Queenie, a writer and librarian from Cape Town who would only really acknowledge the latter when describing herself. All of them have a lot of growing to do in order to both discover and reinvent who they are and what they want from life. For the moment, though, they want to meet Marian Keyes.
It’s really impressive, given it was written by four people, that there is such a sense of cohesion. That said, each writer (wo)manning a character also gives everyone their own unique voice that takes the character development to the next level. It is also wonderfully South African and filled with plenty Marian-esque dry humour.
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