Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married by Marian Keyes

From the Publisher

What happens when a psychic tells Lucy that she'll be getting married within the year? Her roommates panic! What is going to happen to their blissful existence of eating take-out, drinking too much wine, bringing men home, and never vacuuming?

Lucy reassures her friends that she's far too busy arguing with her mother and taking care of her irresponsible father to get married. And then there's the small matter of not even having a boyfriend.

But then Lucy meets gorgeous, unreliable Gus. Could he be the future Mr. Lucy Sullivan? Or could it be handsome Chuck? Or Daniel, the world's biggest flirt? Or even cute Jed, the new guy at work?

Maybe her friends have something to worry about after all....

Chicago Tribune

Thoroughly enchanting...Keyes crafts virtually every sentence of this very charming novel into an art form of high hilarity.

Publishers Weekly

Lucy Sullivan, the eponymous heroine of Irish writer Keyes's second offbeat romantic comedy to be published in the U.S. (after Watermelon), fancies herself simultaneously miserable and happy. A 26-year-old Londoner, Lucy is the kind of woman who thinks that any man who's decent to her must be Mr. Wrong. But when she visits a fortune-teller with a trio of mismatched friends, a marriage is predicted for the near future. When the fortune-teller's prophecies for the other three come true in peculiar ways, even disbelieving, boyfriendless Lucy begins to suspect that, somehow, wedding bells will ring for her. The identity of the lucky man will come as no surprise, though Lucy remains oblivious until the very end, but there are many eligible bachelors on the scene, among them Gus, Lucy's sexy but unreliable new lover; Daniel, her oldest friend; Chuck, a handsome American; and Adrian, the video shop man. The attendant mayhem includes drunken meals at ethnic restaurants, flamenco dancing accidents, blind dates gone wrong and many delicious confessions and revelations. As Lucy says, "I was still at that stage in my life when I thought that weekdays were for recovering from the weekend," but more often than not, her weekdays are as full of exhausting fun as her weekends. Surprisingly for a comic novel, the book also takes on the serious themes of clinical depression and alcoholism, handling both with sensitivity and humor. Throughout, the effervescent narrative is fueled by witty repartee; though its outcome may be predictable, its sentiments are heartfelt, and its progress is sprightly. Fans of Bridget Jones will be delighted. Agent, Russell Galen of Scovil Chichak Galen. (Aug.) FYI: Touchstone Pictures has optioned the rights to Keyes's novel, Rachel's Holiday. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Following the successful Watermelon, the Irish-born, London-based Keyes introduces us to Lucy, luckless in love but destined (according to a tarot card reading) to be married within the year.

Romantic Times - Jill M. Smith

While much of Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married is written in a somewhat humorous vein, it certainly proves the old saying, “with friends like these, who needs enemies?” Following the exploits of Lucy’s self-centered and shallow crowd rapidly wears thin.

Kirkus Reviews

The charms of her irresistible debut, Watermelon (1998), are diluted in Keyes's latest effort, in which an Irish office-worker in London, who enjoys the swinging-singles life but has horrible luck with men, suddenly understands why she chooses to cavort with losers. Lucy, a diminutive lass with a wicked sense of humor, shares an apartment with a couple of women who are every bit as eager to party hearty as she is. The three live for their weekend binges, and for the men encountered thereby, but when she goes to a fortune-teller with her workmates, the news of imminent marriage she receives makes Lucy look at her next boyfriend in an entirely new way. Not that he•s terribly different from his predecessors: Gus, picked up at a bash that Lucy attends, sweeps her off her feet and drinks all the friend's Guinness. Though he•s penniless, jobless, and without a home he's willing to take her to, his charm and boyish looks are enough to make Lucy think he's The One, so he moves in and helps her drink through her wages. Even when he disappears for three weeks without an explanation, she still takes him back•to the horror of her roommates. But then Gus goes for good, just in time for Lucy's mom to announce she's leaving her incontinent drunk of a husband, making Lucy feel obligated to live with her dad and turn things right for him. When she•s back home, the ugly truth finally dawns: all her men resemble Daddy. But once she sees the light, she also sees there•s a man who doesn't fit the pattern•and he's been waiting patiently for her to realize it. An odd mix of witty dialogue and hard-core alcoholic reality that•s compromised by flat characterization, particularly in Lucy's case. Herlimited development makes her too slight to bear the burden of her transformation with any credibility.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0641934602
  
• ISBN-13: 9780641934605
• Format: Paperback, 640pp
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Pub. Date: February 2007
• Edition Description: Bargain

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

When Meredia reminded me that the four of us from the office were due to visit a fortune-teller the following day, my stomach lurched.

"You've forgotten," accused Meredia, her chubby face aquiver.

I had.

She slapped her hand down on her desk and warned, "Don't even think of trying to tell me that you're not coming."

"Damn," I whispered, because that was just what I had been about to do. Not because I had any objections to having my fortune told. On the contrary—it was usually good for a laugh. Especially when they got to the part where they told me that the man of my dreams was just around the next comer. That part was always hilarious.

Even I laughed.

But I was poor. Although I had just been paid, my bank account was a post-holocaust, corpse-strewn wasteland because the day I'd been paid, I'd spent a fortune on aromatherapy oils that had promised to rejuvenate and energize and uplift me.

And bankrupt me, except it didn't say that on the packaging. But I think the idea was that I'd be so rejuvenated and energized and uplifted that I wouldn't care.

So when Meredia reminded me that. I'd committed myself to paying some woman thirty pounds so that she could tell me that I would travel over water and that I was quite psychic myself, I realized that I'd be going without lunch for two weeks.

"I'm not sure that I can afford it," I said nervously.

"You can't back out now!" thundered Meredia. "Mrs. Nolan is giving us a discount. The rest of us will have to pay more if you don't come."

"Who's this Mrs. Nolan?" Megan asked suspiciously, looking up from her computerwhere she had been playing Solitaire. She was supposed to be running a check on debtors overdue a month.

"The tarot reader," said Meredia.

"What kind of name is Mrs. Nolan?" demanded Megan.

"She's Irish," protested Meredia.

"No!" Megan tossed her shiny, blond hair in annoyance. "I mean, what kind of name is 'Mrs. Nolan' for a psychic? She should be called Madam Zora or something like that. She can't be called 'Mrs. Nolan.' How can we believe a word that she says?"

"Well, that's her name." Meredia sounded hurt.

"And why didn't she change it?" said Megan. "There's nothing to it, so I'm told. Isn't that right, so-called Meredia?"

A pregnant pause.

"Or should I say 'Cathy'?" Megan continued with triumph.

"No, you shouldn't," said Meredia. "My name is Meredia."

"Sure," said Megan, with great sarcasm.

"It is!" said Meredia hotly.

"So let's see your birth certificate," challenged Megan.

Megan and Meredia didn't see eye to eye on most things and especially not on Meredia's name. Megan was a no-nonsense Australian with a low bullshit threshold. Since she had arrived three months ago as a temp, she had insisted that Meredia wasn't Meredia's real name. She was probablyright. Although I was very fond of Meredia, I had to agree that her name had a certain makeshift, ramshackle, cobbled-together-out-of-old-egg-cartons feel to it.

But unlike Megan I couldn't really see a problem with that.

"So it's definitely not 'Cathy'?" Megan took a little notebook out of her purse and drew a line through something.

"No," said Meredia stiffly.

"Right," said Megan. "That's all the Cs done. Time for the Ds. Daphne? Deirdre? Dolores? Denise? Diana? Dinah?"

"Shut up!" said Meredia, clearly on the verge of tears.

"Stop it." Hetty put a gentle hand on Megan's arm, because that's the kind of thing that Hetty did. Although Hetty was rich, she was also a good, kind person, who poured oil on troubled waters. Which meant, of course, that she wasn't much fun, but no one was perfect.

Immediately upon meeting Hetty, you could tell that Hetty came from old money—mostly because she had horrible clothes. Even though she was only about thirty-five she wore awful tweed skirts and flowery dresses that looked like family heirlooms. She never bought new clothes, which was a shame because one of the chief ways that office workers bonded was by displaying the spoils of the post-payday shopping run.

"I wish that Aussie bitch would leave," Meredia muttered to Hetty.

"It probably won't be long now," Hetty said soothingly.

"When are you going to leave?" Meredia demanded of Megan.

"As soon as I've got the cash," Megan replied.

Megan was doing her grand tour of Europe and had temporarily run out of money. But as soon as she had enough money to go, she was going—she constantly reminded us—to Scandinavia or Greece or the Pyrenees or the west of Ireland.

Until then Hetty and I would have to break up the vicious fights that broke out regularly. Megan was tall and tanned and gorgeous, Meredia was short and fat and not gorgeous. Meredia was jealous of Megan's beauty, while Megan despised Meredia's excess weight. When Meredia couldn't buy clothes to fit her, instead of making sympathetic noises like the rest of us did, Megan barked, "Stop whining and go on a bloody diet!"

But Meredia never did. And in the meantime she was condemned to cause cars to swerve whenever she walked down the road. Because instead of trying to disguise her size with vertical stripes and dark colors, she seemed to dress to enhance it. She went for the layered look, layers and layers and layers of fabric. Really, lots. Acres of fabric, yards and yards of velvet, draped and pinned and knotted and tied, anchored with broaches, attached with scarves, pinned and arranged along her sizeable girth.

And the more colors the better. Crimson and vermilion and sunburst orange and flame red . . .