Never too late (by Cathy Kelly)

(Amazon UK link)

I have had quite mixed feelings about the books I have read by the Irish novelist Cathy Kelly. I loved the first three I read, around five years ago: The house on Willow Street, Homecoming and Best of friends. I then read one I didn’t like quite as much. Since then I have read another five, and only liked one of them. The others, I felt, were too wordy and rather trite - a far cry from the excellent stories and characterisation of the first ones I read. 

I wasn’t going to try any more books by this author, but a friend gave me a used copy of ‘Never too late’, and I decided to read it over the past few days. Unfortunately, it’s another one that, in my opinion, is trite and over-long. It’s more than 500 pages and although I kept reading, it didn’t grab me in any way.

I have finally realised that the books I like by Cathy Kelly were all written in the past twelve years or so. The ones I like least were written in the earlier part of the century, or - in the case of this one - the late 1990s. ‘Never too late’ was her third published novel. Evidently it was well received at the time, since she was given a publishing contract and went on to write a large number of other novels. So I may be in the minority in having disliked it. 

There are really four main characters in this book: Evie, her daughter Rosie, Evie’s sister Cara, and Evie’s best friend Olivia. Olivia is the one I liked best; she’s a domestic science teacher, married with a small daughter whom she adores. Unfortunately her husband Stephen is very controlling. He appears narcissistically self-centred in his insistence on telling her exactly what she may and may not do. He even tries to tell her what to wear for social events, and he regularly puts her down, destroying whatever confidence or ideas she might have.

Bizarrely, Olivia still loves Stephen. When she’s offered a TV slot, out of the blue, she doesn’t tell him at first, certain he will disparage her. He is furious when he finds out, but her success has given her the confidence to give him an ultimatum. I’m not convinced that a bit of counselling would actually change someone as appalling as Stephen is portrayed, but Olivia’s story made (in my opinion) the most interesting part of the story.

Rosie is the other person I quite liked. At 17 she’s eager to be treated as an adult, but she has a lot more self-control and self-respect than most of the adults around her. Her older relatives seem to portrayed her as puritanical at times, for not wanting to behave promiscuously and I thought that was a bit sad. She’s kind, and wise, and has more depth than either her mother or her aunt.  

I really didn’t like either Evie or Cara, which is a pity as Evie is the most significant character. She’s the one who is introduced first, but she comes across as shallow, interested only in clothes, and drink, and food. She’s portrayed as being overweight and attractive, but she seems obsessed with her weight. Rosie’s father, we learn early on, was killed in an accident when Rosie was a baby, and Evie is now engaged to Simon. Simon seems a likeable kind of guy, often travelling for work and not very aware of what Evie does in the house. But safe, and secure, and they are clearly good friends. 

However Evie dreams of knights in armour coming to her rescue - there are some weird sections in italics, outlining her daydreams, which are at odds with reality. It’s obvious from early in the book that she’s going to break up with Simon, but I was shocked at how far she took the wedding arrangements before finally doing something about it. I was rooting for him, hoping I was wrong, but Evie is really quite self-centred, though not quite as controlling as Stephen. 

Evie has mood changes, for no apparent reason, and seems to think that love is primarily based on physical attraction. But she doesn’t trust the person she claims to be in love with in the second half of the book. 1990s mass produced romance novels usually included some misunderstandings before the main characters got together. But the misunderstandings in this book don’t even make sense. Evie is intelligent but she doesn’t seem to have any clue about people, and never thinks to ask normal questions when she is concerned. 

Her sister Cara is shadowy, obsessed with drinking and relationships, and she keeps quarrelling with Evie. I never really figured out why, and couldn’t remember whether they were speaking to each other or not - it changes quite rapidly. One of the catalysts for problems is that their father, widowed when Cara was a baby, announces that he’s getting married again. Evie demonstrates her small-mindedness and jealousy early in the book by being very unpleasant to her future stepmother. 

There’s a lot of internal monologue and navel-gazing in addition to Evie’s daydreams, much of which should (in my view) have been edited significantly. Worse, there are at least three detailed sex scenes, each one running over several pages. I managed to skip them easily - I cannot understand why anybody would want to read this kind of thing - but they add to my somewhat low opinion of the book. 

I won’t be keeping this, or reading it again, and wouldn’t recommend it. But it’s been highly rated by others. So if you like this kind of light ‘chick lit’ with very little substance, and want a long book for holiday reading, then it may be worth trying. 

But if you prefer novels with three-dimensional characters and well written storylines, try some of the author’s more recent books which I did like, and do recommend. 

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