![]() ![]() ![]() We meet Rachel again as a fortysomething back at the Cloisters clinic where she was treated for cocaine addiction in the first novel, and where she is now head counsellor her only addiction is snazzy trainers. Yet despite selling more than 35m copies over the years, she is too often dismissed as a popular writer of books with pink covers (both of which are fine by her, thanks for asking). In fact, her novels have tackled hefty issues such as addiction (Rachel’s Holiday), bereavement (Anybody Out There), domestic violence (This Charming Man) and depression (The Mystery of Mercy Close), always with her trademark lightness of touch. Loved by readers for her chatty style and satisfying storylines, she was for many years dubbed the queen of chick lit, a phrase now as passé as Daniel Cleaver’s chat-up lines in Bridget Jones’s Diary. Within a few minutes it feels as if we are both having tea and biscuits under the duvet at her Dún Laoghaire home outside Dublin, as she gives me a virtual tour of her bedroom. She is wearing a lilac hoodie and flashes a pastel pink manicure (a Keyes heroine would know the shade) as she rearranges the pillows to get comfy. “It was a beautiful send off,” she says in her southern Irish lilt, as reassurance that she’s OK to talk. ![]() It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, but she has just got back from a funeral and was feeling chilly. ![]()
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