One of my favourite authors back in the day was Marian Keyes, an Irishwoman who writes whimsical, romantic, comedy-dramas about life issues like drug addiction and losing a partner. Serious stuff, but with an Irish-comedic bent. With a bit of Irish swearing thrown in.
I read all of her books multiple times over the years - they helped me through some dark times and felt like old friends during some stages of my life. However in the last decade or so, my collection of Marian Keyes books had gradually been pushed to the back of the bookshelf to make way for more crime thrillers (the bloodier the better), as well as a variety of self-help books, cookbooks, books about alternative health, and, more recently, books about pregnancy and child-rearing.
It wasn't until we were packing to move house recently that I found a whole pile of Marian books, along with a plethora of other girly titles, hiding in a box labeled "OLD CRAP". I have such a way with words, I know. Anyway, of course part of packing to move house is going through all of your aptly named old crap and reminiscing, and this box took me on a lovely trip down memory lane . Until I got to one book in particular and realised that I'd named my kids after two of the main characters. Bloody hell. At this stage my youngest was over a year old - while it hadn't twigged before now, obviously those two names had been bouncing about in my subconscious for over a decade. The creepy part though, was that, in the book, these characters were a couple. Ewww.
