23 Marian K eyes, R a c h e l’s H o lid a y (London: Penguin, 1997), p 196. Further references to this n ovel are
gains a sense o f superiority over Rachel for much o f the novel, as we are aware o f how much she is deluding herself We laugh at her assumption that the Cloisters rehabilitation clinic will be a celebrity-spotting ‘holiday’. Clearly, sartorial knowledge is not really the most important thing for a relationship, and it is not until the end o f the novel, when she has in fact accepted the morals of her parents and relinquished much o f her past life, that she is able to once again meet up with her boyfriend, and begin an ‘adult’ relationship. The point o f the novel appears to be an adjustment in the heroine’s view o f herself in relation to society, with the hero as her prize. The goal is reminiscent o f traditional comedy, though it is more usually society which should change to accommodate the protagonist.
However, in more recent novels, Keyes clearly endeavours to give her heroines more than one kind o f goal. In line with a good deal of popular romance fiction and film, many o f her characters must negotiate professional and personal commitments, which seems to be an attempt to mirror the ‘everyday’ experience o f more (presumably female) readers: ‘Both partners must make some sacrifice to reach the correct balance between professional and personal concerns.’24 In The Other Side o f the Story (2005) Keyes focuses on three main characters whose stories have very different endings. It is, however, interesting to see how these are differently weighted. Gemma, who is fully Irish, appears to be the main protagonist (as she begins the novel), and she begins a new relationship at the end o f the story. Lily (Gemma’s English ex-friend) learns a valuable lesson about taking responsibility for her own life, and re-affirms her existing relationship. Jojo (who is an American career woman) actually finishes by ending what seems like a potentially perfect relationship, as the man in question interferes with her
24 Kristine B runovska Karnick, ‘C om m itm ent and R eaffirm ation in H o llyw ood Rom antic C om ed y’, in
job. It is noticeable that the characters most associated with the Irish milieu are the most prominent and have the ‘happiest’ endings. The comedy o f the novel largely resides in the narratives which head towards the archetypal ‘romantic’ ending, and characters such as Jojo who are not located within this may be seen as a sop to the text’s ‘realism’ whilst never really destabilising its comfort zone.
Keyes’s novels resist the temptation, however, to play the Irish character in terms o f an English audience. Peillon notes that the recent popularity o f Irish culture has been appropriated into the world o f ‘commodity,’ one example o f which is popular fiction. In this model, the Irish character should be geared towards pleasing an English audience, and should do so in a certain way, as Peillon notes:
This commodification takes place in a context o f proximity to the English market; the task of writing becomes in this way that o f seducing mainly English readers. And this is done by picturing Ireland and its people in a way which flatters stereotypes and prejudices widely held in England,
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by portraying an Irish quaintness.
However, this does not appear to happen with the character of Gemma, or indeed any o f Keyes’ other Irish protagonists. They are distinctly un-‘quaint’, and throw themselves into the world of commodity in a way which seems to say that they are equal to it, rather than subsumed by its mores. Despite this, Ireland is still frequently depicted as the site for personal discovery, or re-discovery. While Keyes posits a global economy and culture, in which Ireland relies as much as any British or American culture on the status of celebrity and commodity, it is still often the place to which characters return in order to bring some sense of meaning to their lives. Indeed,
25 M ichel P eillon, ‘A gen cy, F low s and P ost-colonial Structure in Ireland’, Irish R eview 30 (2 0 0 3 ), 71-
the work-life balance often has to ‘cross borders’ in order for it to be successfully readjusted and the novels often end with a return to family and origins.
Writers such as Pauline McLynn, meanwhile, deal with the separation between personal, family and work life rather differently. Her Leo Street novels centre around a female protagonist in the male-orientated world of private investigating, and there is often a tension between Street’s close-knit ‘community’ o f family and friends, and her career as a ‘private’ investigator. Though this could be written as a potentially glamorous and exciting job, it is made clear by Street at the beginning o f the first novel that it is, in fact, emphatically mundane and often centred on domestic disputes: ‘Most of my work is mundane- insurance claims, infidelities, fraud and sometimes a missing
9f\
person. Jealousy, spite, greed and despair, that’s my currency.’ During the long and boring stake-outs this involves, Leo is often marking time in the manner o f the quotidian. In this sense, Street is very much an Everywoman, though her work gives McLynn more scope to put her into situations which can range from low-life (she works in a seedy nightclub as a barmaid to discover a scam in Better Than a Rest
(2001)), to the very glamorous (she also attends a television celebrity c h efs classes to track an adulterous wife in Something fo r the Weekend (2000)) to extremely dangerous (Street also deals with a major drug dealer in order to find a missing girl in Right on Time (2003)).
Despite the presence o f several romantic possibilities in the novels, McLynn’s novels differ from Keyes’s in their resolution. McLynn’s choice to place her examination of these relationships within the crime genre means that it is Leo’s professional life and
26 Pauline M cL ynn, S om eth in g f o r the W eekend (London: H eadline, 2 0 0 0 ), p. 7. Further references to
her cases which provide the resolutions to the novels.27 The personal relationships are on-going and are not sealed into the narrative. As they cannot therefore constitute a ‘goal’, this ending is substituted by the completion o f a professional goal- the resolution o f the case. In effect, this allows for a naturalistic progression o f Street’s personal relationships, rather than the assumption o f a happy future that the reader must deduce from Keyes’s novel.
This also leaves scope for McLynn to consider some other issues due to Leo’s complicated love-life which culminates in her pregnancy in the third novel. The father o f the baby could be either one o f the two main romantic leads with whom she has been struggling throughout the series, and Leo seems aware o f a lingering expectation in the society around her that she should be in a stable, and legal, relationship:
‘Okay,’ I admitted. ‘I need a husband.’ Again with the glare.
‘Really need a husband,’ I amended.
He continued to be rude on the staring front, so I retorted with, ‘No need to be so traditional, mutt.’
The very way she approaches this debate, however, by talking it through with her amusingly humanised dog, reinforces the optimistic way in which this issue is dealt with, rather than it being a cause for high drama. It is also clear that Leo is herself an independent, educated woman, and she is determined that she will be able to cope as a single parent if necessary: ‘I began to plan how to deal with my life without relying on the crutch of an Andy or a Barry; they could not be depended on, even if they seemed to be around from time to time’ (Right: 79). Nevertheless, it is interesting that
27 M cLynn is not the on ly writer w ho brings together the crim e and rom ance genre. This also appears,
for exam ple, in: M aggie G ibson, Blah, B lah B lacksheep (London: Orion, 2 0 0 1 ).
28 Pauline M cL ynn, R igh t on Time (London: H eadline, 2003 [2002]), pp. 9 8-99. Further references are
a more definite romantic ending does actually appear to end the series o f novels (at least as I write), as Andy saves Leo from an attack by a group o f drug dealers, perhaps reasserting this as a final goal.
This new balance in relationships, both between men and women and between the professional and the personal, also shows itself in the work o f male writers, who concentrate on male protagonists. This re-appraisal o f gender roles is clear in the work of Colin Bateman. His main character in a series o f novels, Dan Starkey, is always under the threat o f becoming separated from his wife Patricia, and she is often the party to review their relationship. However, the way in which gender issues are treated is quite different than in the female-authored novels I have dealt with so far. Clearly, changes in social issues such as divorce are different in the British- administered Northern Ireland, where Colin Bateman’s novels are largely set. Nevertheless, the authors are interesting to compare from a genre and gender point o f view as the texts are roughly contemporary with one another.
In particular, the depiction of Patricia, Dan’s wife, needs to be politically considered. Patricia is a ‘modem woman’ in so much as she is independent and capable o f making her own decisions (both in her personal life and her career). In many ways she is also a very ‘reasonable’ in her relationship with Dan; for example, when she is deciding upon their future on the occasion she believes him to have had an affair, she is upset but is able to contextualise the situation:
It’s not just her. Look- I just need a bit o f time away from you, and this is as good a time as any when I have a bit of an excuse. I ju st... feel like I should be doing something
else. We need to change. W e’re getting older, Dan, and w e’re still running around like kids.
In many o f the novels, Patricia represents the ‘ordinary’ and ‘everyday’ life which Dan must fight to save as it is ripped away from him, frequently by paramilitary characters and violence. She is, indeed, literally taken from him (and kidnapped) on two occasions, in both Divorcing Jack (2001 [1995]) and Shooting Sean (2001), and on other occasions she leaves him, providing him with a reason to get out of whatever scrape he is in simply so he has the chance to win her back.
Although the novels reflect in some ways the changing role o f women (Patricia is not one-dimensional), it may also be interpreted as a hidden sleight. She can also be depicted as ‘unfathomable’, and is more often the butt o f the joke than the source of humour, serving as a foil for Dan’s sharp one-liners. As well as her sudden turns from reasonable behaviour to physical attacks, she seems to change her moral compass. For example, in Divorcing Jack, she is very clear that for Dan to kill someone, even a murderer, is wrong: ‘It makes you as bad as him, Dan. And you’re not.’ {Jack: 111)
However, by the time o f a more recent novel, Driving Big Davie, she is actively encouraging an act o f murderous vengeance against the man who killed her son: ‘That
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man has ruined our lives. [...] This isn’t about revenge, it’s about justice.’
Such equivocal positioning o f female characters serves to illustrate a difference in the ‘truth value’ given to male and female characters, a trait which Neale and Krutnik have noted in much earlier film comedies: ‘The imbalance between male and female ‘perspectives’- between the ‘truth-value’ ascribed to each- is especially marked in the
29 Colin Batem an, D iv o rc in g Jack (London: HarperCollins, 2001 [1995]), p. 40. Further references to
this n ovel are given after quotations in the text.
expository articulation o f their oppositional desires.’31 These discussions about what the female protagonist does want, or should want, crop up more regularly in female orientated works, especially in those centring on romantic relationships. Here, the perspective is controlled more tightly by the female protagonist, as she is the one with the stronger voice. A closing discussion, with her ‘perfect partner’, is typically one in which the woman realises that there are no obstacles to the thing she both should, and already does, want (though this is still generally the hero). For example in
Watermelon (2001):
I said nothing. I was thinking.
He was right, I decided.
When happiness makes a guest appearance in one’s life, it’s important to make the most of it. It may not stay around for long and when it has gone wouldn’t it be terrible to think that all the time one could have been happy was wasted worrying about when that happiness would be taken away?32
This points to a mediation for both genders about the ‘truth’ ascribed to any gendered perspective within ‘everyday’ settings, as well as those o f romantic comedy. The male characters in some female-authored novels are made one-dimensional (or fantasy figures) to suit the wishes of the female protagonist, in a similar way to the role o f the heroine in traditional models. The male character in the above quote, for example, is ideal as he tells the protagonist exactly what she wants to hear. This re-appraisal occurs not only between the two genders of the current generation, but there is also a mediation between the gender roles of the present and the gender roles o f the past, which have changed so rapidly in the new environment, especially within the Republic o f Ireland.
31 Steve N ea le and Frank Krutnik, P o p u la r Film a n d Television C o m ed y (London: R outledge, 1990), p.
144.
32 Marian K eyes, W aterm elon (London: Arrow, 2001 [1996]) p. 610. Further references to this novel