You

couldn't think, what was it you were saying? To say you wanted to make your living as a writer.

It wasn't for people like us.

And, you know, both my parents came from poverty and it was very much about education.

And they really wanted me to have a steady, serious, stable job, you know, where I could have a pension.

I mean, my dad, my poor dad was just obsessed with a pension.

And I was very lucky in that, like, I was the first person in my entire family ever, like, in all the thousands of years or whatever, to go to university.

Tell us about your mother and how you came to share her.

If you like the sound of that, then you will love this book, I promise.

Hello, it's Marian Keyes here, and I'd like to tell you about one of my most favorite books ever.

It's Cold Comfort Farm by a writer called Stella Gibbons, published in 1932.

So I first read this delightful book when I went on a solo holiday to Greece to discover myself, and all I discovered was that being on holiday alone is no fun.

Then I picked up Cold Comfort Farm, which immersed me in a wildly entertaining family, and to this day remains the funniest book I've ever read.

As it's the National Year of Reading, and we're celebrating the Radio 2 Book Club this week, here's a short extract for you.

A snood full of coarse porridge hung over the fire, and standing with one arm resting upon the high mantle, looking moodily down into the heaving contents of the snood, was a tall young man whose riding boots were splashed with mud to the thigh, and whose coarse linen shirt was open to his waist.

Do you have any advice for people who want to get back into reading? Like, when do you get most of your reading done?

But I have so much advice.

I mean, the first really important thing I would say is read something you want to read, not something you think you should read.

Like reading is meant to be enjoyable.

It's meant to be a pleasure.

It's not a way of kind of virtue signalling or saying I am more intellectual than I am.

And...

What are you reading at the moment? Or is there anything that you've read recently that you just want to shout about, please?

In your dreams.

Do you have a favorite character when it comes to The Walsh Sisters? I kind of identify with all of them.

I know that's maybe a kind of a cop-out answer.

Maggie, I really identify with her kind of, her control and her need to make sure everybody's okay.

Like, she's always thinking ahead and knowing that, like, you know, Claire is going to show up without a present.

Um, I'm very like that.

I think in a way, Claire is the one I identify with least, but I do really enjoy the way that, like, she's completely devoted to her appearance.

I think you still refer to yourself as an alcoholic?

How do you decide when it's time to do something like, let's revisit where Anna's at?

Okay, I don't make any decisions from my head.

Like, it's always entirely intuitive.

And when I wrote Watermelon, I come from a family of five.

And so I created a family of five because I'm obviously incredibly basic and have no imagination.

Every family has five in it.

Genuinely, looking back now, like 30 years, it looks like I had a monumental plan for world domination and I was sitting in a swingy chair with a white cat.

Is that part of the pleasure of it?