Product Description

A nervous breakdown seems like a great idea: all that lying in bed and watching daytime TV. But who's going to have it? Will it be housewife Clodagh, who spends her days microwaving pasta for her demanding toddlers and waiting for her beautiful husband Dylan to come home? Or Lisa, hard, brittle and shiny as an M&M, reeling from the shock of a demotion from her fabulous job in London to a one-horse magazine in Dublin? Or Ashling, so normal she's weird?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4957 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sushi For Beginners has all the right ingredients for a thirtysomething novel. The thirtysomething girls are there, looking for a better job, a better man, ANYTHING other than what they've already got; there are men to die for and men you wish would drop dead, preferably in agony. And these "so-real you can pinch 'em" people live their lives in a funny, thrilling, sad world that you wish hadn't just ended when you turn the last page. But there is more, because this one is written by best-selling Irish author Marian Keyes.

Where her previous best-seller, Last Chance Saloon, featured Irish folk living in London, Sushi For Beginners is set in Keyes' hometown, Dublin. The only "foreigner" here is Lisa from London, a real madam whose longed-for promotion to Manhattan magazine is knocked off-course a few thousand miles when she is forced to accept the editorship of Colleen, a new magazine for young women, billed by the publishers as "dumbed-down" but definitely "sexy". Lisa would frankly rather eat one of her freebie Patrick Cox stilettos. Still a job is a job, and anyhow, Irish MD Jack Devine could just turn out to be a major consolation prize. Lisa's deputy at Colleen is Ashling, a Little Miss Fix-It, whose early role reversal with her mother (thanks to the latter's nervous breakdown) has induced an organisational paranoia and a handbag filled with emergency equipment to meet any eventuality. Oh, and a best friend whose motives might not always be in Ashling's best interests.

This is a story of three girls' lives, what's made them what they are and their search for happiness--sometimes found in unlikely places and sometimes lost forever. With Sushi For Beginners, Keyes is fast becoming the undisputed Queen of her genre. She is wincingly accurate and wickedly funny, and while she can tackle big issues like homelessness (no pun intended) with honest feeling devoid of over-sentimentality, her insight into the aspirations of thirtysomething women at the turn of the 21st century sets her high above the competition. --Carey Green This review refers to the hardcover edition of this title.

Review
"'Marian Keyes is the queen of feel-good fiction. Her hip, heart-warming comedies have made her the hottest young female writer in Britain and the voice of a generation' Mirror"

About the Author
Marian Keyes is the author of four much-loved bestsellers: WATERMELON (which has been optioned for a TV film by Caroline Aherne), LUCY SULLIVAN IS GETTING MARRIED (recently a TV series with 5 million viewers), RACHEL'S HOLIDAY (optioned by Touchstone Pictures for a six figure sum) and LAST CHANCE SALOON (published last year to amazing reviews and record-breaking trade paperback sales). She lives in Dublin.

Customer Reviews

Doesn't do her talent justice...
Like many of the people who have reviewed the book, I am a huge fan of Marian Keyes. I have enjoyed her previous books immensely and have recommended them to everyone I can. I was very anxious to read Sushi for Beginners and couldn't wait for it to arrive from Amazon. I quickly dove into the book and liked the first 200-300 pages, but after that I felt like it dragged on and had to force myself to finish. This book seemed very much like a tired re-tread of Last Chance Saloon and too much like the mediocre efforts of Marian wannabes. Characters were not explored enough, the dialogue was not as funny or witty as in previous novels, there were issues that were left unanswered... and some of the characters were horribly unlikeable. You could have slapped any author's name on the cover... and you wouldn't have known the difference because Marian's signature wit and insight into what makes us tick are sadly missing. Is the book still worth reading? Yes. Even when she's just "writing by numbers", the book is still miles better than 95% of the books in the same genre. It must be difficult to always attain the level of greatness Marian has achieved with her previous novels, but I really hope the next one is back on track. We all know she is far more talented than Sushi for Beginners suggests.

Quick and very good read.
This is my second Marian Keyes book and I now at the point where I need to read the rest of her books.

Lisa - What a pain the behind, from the start I wasn't to sure what I would think of her, but for most of the book I felt that she was just a bitter woman with a lot to deal with. She at times never seem to care about anyone or anything but her self. But towards the end my feelins for her changed, but she still was the same old way. I felt that she was never truly happy working at Colleen, but that she dealt with it as best she could.

Ashling - I felt a that the story revolved around her and her life. She is Little Miss Fix It, always carrying around her bag with bandages, tape and so forth. At times I felt that was a goody good. But her life never was too predictable, she was just happy to be back working for magazine doing what she liked. Her love life was one you read about all the time and sometimes seemed a little preditable, but somteimes it took a turn and changed. Her friendships with Joy and Ted were wonderful and her friendship with Clodagh was good, but it had it bad parts.

Clodagh - In my opinion she was a whiney woman, who was just out for herself. She lived what would be the good life to a lot people. She was married and had two kids. But in her world it wasn't good enough so she had to take things to the extreme and screw up a lot with her life and other peoples lives.

Overall this book was wonderful, I loved how the three charactors and all the supporting charactors acted and how there storys seem to come together at the end.

I can't wait to read more from Marian Keyes

Another great read from Marian Keyes!!!!
First, I have to say I'm a BIG fan of Marian Keyes, going to the lengths of ordering from amazon.co.uk even though I'm in the US, so I don't have to wait the extra 8-12 months to get her books... : )

If you like her other books, you'll probably like this one too. It's very similiar in feel to Last-Chance Saloon. Again, it's about several major characters and not in the first person. There's Lisa, the bitchy magazine editor(I know you were supposed to like her by the end of the book, but she was too mean for me to feel she deserved pity!), Ashling the very-organized "nice" girl who works for Lisa, and Clodagh, Ashling's best friend. There's a host of supporting characters who are just great, too.

Most of the book focuses on relationships and what the characters want out of them and how they react to what they are getting. Lisa's in the process of a divorce, Clodagh is unhappily married, and Ashling convinces herself to like a guy she didn't at first...there's a very interesting twist near the end of the book that also delves into women's friendships which I found interesting.

Overall, I didn't like the book as much as Watermelon(still my favorite!) but it's a nice, long engrossing read and I recommend it to anyone who liked Last-Chance Saloon.