This Charming Man by Marian Keyes Penguin, HK$104
It is a brave author who uses The Smiths' best song as the title for a novel. (I often think that 'Punctured bicycle on a hillside desolate' is the finest lyric of all.) But then Marian Keyes is not only a brave writer but an increasingly epic one. Populist? Sure. Skilled? You betcha. In This Charming Man, she employs her enjoyable way with a story to bury something dark: the titular anti-hero, Paddy de Courcy. The deputy leader of the New Ireland Party, he is the handsome centre of four women's universes: Grace, a former girlfriend who is now a sharp-penned journalist; Grace's twin sister, Marnie, another ex of the irresistible de Courcy, and Lola, his girlfriend, who is unaware of the existence of number four, Alicia - his fianc?e. As the centre of these universes, de Courcy is the blackest of holes. Like Arthur Huntingdon in Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, his beguiling exterior covers a multitude of violent sins against women. De Courcy puts the 'harm' into 'charm'. Dark? Certainly, but Keyes keeps your spirits up and the pages turning, partly because Alicia seems ignorant about the man she is to marry. No wonder Keyes is the Queen of Superior Chick Lit.