Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    This Charming Man
    This Charming Man
    This Charming Man
    Audiobook26 hours

    This Charming Man

    Written by Marian Keyes

    Narrated by Caroline Lennon

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    'Everybody remembers where they were the day they heard that Paddy de Courcy was getting married.'

    Slick, handsome politician Paddy de Courcy is on the up. His party is set to do well in the elections and he's just announced his engagement to the beautiful Alicia. Which is news to his girlfriend, Lola, who, within hours, finds herself dumped and warned not to talk to the press. Yet journalist Grace is on the prowl. She has been after Paddy ever since he ruined her sister Marnie's life way back in college. Grace is looking for the inside story and thinks Lola holds the key . . .But do any of them know the real Paddy?
    'So funny, so perceptive, so real . . . I changed my life for this book' Mail On Sunday

    'The laughs come fast and furious . . . a gripping, compelling tale' Sunday Independent

    'Brimming with her trademark down-to-earth wit' Cosmopolitan

    'Gripping from the start . . . the master at her best' Daily Telegraph.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateSep 1, 2008
    ISBN9781407430829
    This Charming Man
    Author

    Marian Keyes

    Marian Keyes is the author of ten bestselling novels and two essay collections. She lives in Ireland with her husband and their two imaginary dogs.

    More audiobooks from Marian Keyes

    Related to This Charming Man

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Our Unconventional Love Affair

      Mar 16, 2020

      Our Unconventional Love Affair
      6 min read

    • Article

      Heart of glass DEBBIE’S PRIVATE ANGUISH

      Jan 19, 2020

      “Musician or hooker?” muses Debbie Harry as she fluffs up her peroxide hair in her London hotel room. “I would have definitely made a lot more money if I’d been a hooker, not a singer.” Debbie, who launched a million crushes when she hit the late ’

      5 min read

    • Article

      Kerre, Quite Contrary

      Jul 3, 2022

      Kerre, Quite Contrary
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Shot At Happiness

      Oct 17, 2021

      A Shot At Happiness
      6 min read

    • Article

      Powder Paint And Pride

      Jun 28, 2021

      Powder Paint And Pride
      9 min read

    • Article

      Woman About Town

      Jul 27, 2023

      2023 IS APPARENTLY THE YEAR of doing everything I was scared to do as a teenager. First the driving (which is going very nicely thank you), and now the most hated thing of all: I’ve got braces. My first go-round with orthodontics came when I was 12,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Dane

      Oct 23, 2022

      Great Dane
      7 min read

    • Article

      Wendy Asks For ADVICE

      Jun 14, 2023

      Tell me,’ said Wendy. ‘Have you ever thought that Tom might, you know, be seeing somebody else?’ For the benefit of new readers, Tom is Mr Dear. Wendy is my friend from the charity shop, and we are strolling through the woods near Chateau Dear with o

      3 min read

    • Article

      In Review

      Dec 20, 2021

      In Review
      4 min read

    • Article

      Riccardo

      Jun 14, 2022

      My understanding of my family’s religion was that we didn’t have to go to church if we didn’t want to and that our belief in God was tenuous at best. I grasped the seventh principle, “the interconnected web of all existence,” and I understood the hum

      14 min read

    • Article

      POISON ON Pink Paper

      Dec 23, 2019

      POISON ON Pink Paper
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Crown JEWELS

      Jun 8, 2022

      The Crown JEWELS
      6 min read

    • Article

      My Invitation To Camelot

      Sep 20, 2023

      My Invitation To Camelot
      3 min read

    • Article

      Worst Club In The World

      Dec 29, 2022

      Denise Goldin, 77 S erving up his favourite chicken soup, I couldn’t have been prouder of my son Brett, 28. ‘I got a standing ovation!’ he grinned. ‘I’ve always known you were a star!’ I said. It was April 2006, and Brett had just performed Hamlet in

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘Lady in the Lake’: Featured Fiction from Laura Lippman

      Jul 23, 2019

      An excerpt from Lippman's latest, a sophisticated crime novel that captures the 1960s zeitgeist while painting a striking portrait of female ambition. The post ‘Lady in the Lake’: Featured Fiction from Laura Lippman appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Dawn Neesom Mind Of My Own

      Jan 11, 2022

      Dawn Neesom Mind Of My Own
      3 min read

    • Article

      How Psychics Control Celebs

      Jul 19, 2023

      How Psychics Control Celebs
      7 min read

    • Article

      Cold Calling

      Jan 18, 2021

      Two or three phone calls per week. Every week for six months. All more or less the same. “Hello Mrs Redmond, this is Martin/Tim/Alice/Marmaduke [I’m serious], I’m calling from your internet provider to let you know that your broadband server has been

      6 min read

    • Article

      Nose For A Story

      Feb 22, 2024

      Nose For A Story
      7 min read

    • Article

      Redeployed

      Jan 24, 2020

      Redeployed
      5 min read

    • Article

      Olly Murs

      Apr 22, 2024

      Olly Murs
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for This Charming Man

    3.5/5

    480 ratings34 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Keyes has always been one of my favorite guilty pleasures. I always feel like I can count on her for a quick, fun read, with interesting, funny characters that don’t fit into the clichéd chic-lit mold. She’s always dealt with serious issues in her books-depression, infidelity-but they’ve always been in the background, secondary to the main romantic plotline. Her latest books are a little too heavy-handed. It’s an issue book. This one tackles both alcoholism and domestic abuse. It’s too much for this type of book. Keyes is a competent author, but it almost seems like she’s trying too hard to be serious and substantial now. The alcoholism storyline, may have been fine in another book, a separate story, although not one I’d particularly want to read. It was too over the top and was too distracting. I think the story would have flowed better without this subplot, and if Keyes had beefed up the domestic violence plot, spending more time on fleshing out this character, making us see why all these women were charmed by him. Instead he seems very two-dimensional, like a carton villain.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A long, well-written book. Touching, funny, sweet, interesting. Read beautifully with humor and great accents.
    • 3/5
      Not crazy about the style of character presentation, particularly Lola. Took a while to get the thread of the domestic violence theme but once into it was keen to see how she resolved it. Pity there wasn't a "just desserts' for Paddy and felt sorry for Alicia but in all an interesting presentation of the issues and reasons why women suffer it for so long.
    • 3/5
      I read this for the "a book recommended by a friend" part of my 2018 reading challenge. I'm not a huge fan of chick-lit, so I found the first half kind of lackluster, then the characters really started getting depth and it got much more intriguing.
    • 4/5
      Good story, good characters, but Marnie's actions in the confrontation just don't ring true to me. She was such a mess and magically pulled herself together - hard to buy. Keys stories always seem to be separate incidents written at different times then rearranged. I like her writing, but the overall organization of the book isn't smooth. Still, it's a good story and I really enjoyed the characters.
    • 3/5
      Wasn't expecting to finish this so quickly but an emergency trip to the laundromat got me hooked in. Very moving read watching lives fall apart and lives put themselves back together.
    • 4/5
      a true page turner. charming on the outside but a real sob woman beater on the rest of it. really interesting well woven tale throughout. so GLAD to see that he gets his in the end and LOVED HOW he got his too!!! BRAVO!
    • 4/5
      I was a little reluctant to start this book as I had seen some very mixed reviews, but, after reading it, my faith in Marian Keyes is still strong. Tackling some difficult issues such as abusive relationships and alcoholism, mixing in some dirty politics and adding a group of cross-dressing men, she knows how to serve up an interesting read.Told from the point of view of four women whose lives have been impacted by popular politician Paddy de Courcy, the story does jump around quite a bit. Just when you settled into one woman’s story, you were whisked away into another woman’s life. Luckily, the stories grabbed me immediately and I found most of the women sympathetic and grew to care about them. Lola’s story in particular, after I adjusted to the choppy writing style that was used to define her, was a real attention grabber. Broken-hearted, leaving Dublin to live in a tiny seaside town, this stylist and her adventures had me in stitches. Her trannie-club meetings were hilarious. Off-setting this, Marnie’s story was sad, but like a three-car collusion, hard to look at, but impossible to turn away from. Grace, the voice of reason, was a woman to root for, and Alicia, the least mentioned, and the least known, was intriguing, as much for what we visualized for her future as for her current story.As ever in a Marian Keyes book, I was entertained and enthralled, and I for one, really enjoyed This Charming Man.
    • 4/5
      I was telling my daughter-in-law recently how I give all the books I review either three, four, or five stars, because I don't finish the ones I would rate as one or two. This Charming Man nearly fell in that latter category. A great deal of time was spent developing the stories of Lola, Grace, and Marnie. Grace wasn't in bad shape, but the other two women were hard to take. Lola and Marnie were both struggling in their work because they were in such bad psychological states they couldn't do basic tasks. There were also other reasons why I wasn't enjoying the book. Paddy de Courcy, who was the title character, wasn't in it very much and all the other male characters seemed horrible. I thought Marian Keyes must hate men.Then the book took a few turns and I found it well worth reading. One of the men whom I had seen as abusive turned out not to be violent but instead was supportive to his wife until he was forced to make a hard choice. I sympathized with him rather than hating him. Other male characters began to appear who were decent people. Circumstances allowed Lola to change her life long enough to get to a better place emotionally. Meanwhile Marnie's situation was explained further, so although her life continued to spiral down, I could appreciate why.This novel has one of the best descriptions of alcoholism I've ever read. It shows the disease in detail from the point of view of the alcoholic and also from the points of view of the people who love her. It also covers the victims of domestic abuse in a way that helped me understand why some of the women stay in their situations. After reading the way Keyes covered these two issues, I was able to understand the weaknesses of the victims and appreciate their strengths.Lola's chapters were written in a strange, journal voice I found annoying. Most of the pronouns were dropped, along with words such as the and a. After I got used to it, I could ignore the style. But I still believe it was a bad choice, one that detracted from the novel.This Charming Man isn't an easy read, but in the end it's well worth reading.Steve Lindahl – author of White Horse Regressions and Motherless Soul
    • 4/5
      I really liked this Marian Keyes book. I prefer it when she writes a bit darker books. Loved Rachel's Holiday.

      To be honest I did find Lola's part annoying, the way this was written. No the house but house for instance, it felt like she was a bit dumb but after a while I got into the story and was sad when I finished. 850 pages!

    • 3/5
      At times,this audiobook was excruciating to listen to. The narrator did a great job of making Marnie's character come to life--the desperation, the denial, etc. Though the other characters sounded a little similar, I still really enjoyed listening to her voice.

      ****SPOILER ALERT****

      The one thing that really bothered me about the book was the way the women try to deal with the Paddy situation. NEWFLASH: Grace is a journalist. She knows tons of journalists. You have evidence and affidavits from no less than 5 women. You have evidence that he hired people to burn Grace's car. (This could land Spanish John in jail which would suck for Paddy, unless he told on Paddy, in which case Paddy could be charged)And what do they do? Basically just tell him to apologize and leave Dee alone. Stupid. Even when he was humiliated by Dee I didn't care that much...especially considering that, while I hated Alicia's character, I didn't want her to end up with an abusive husband. And that plotline leaves her with an humiliated, probably LIVID, husband. At the very least, either Grace or one of her colleagues could've written an expose on Paddy and his horrific history.

    • 4/5
      Keyes is such a brilliant writer. I loved this book. Though it is not as funny as 'Angels' but in its own right, its a masterpiece. The love and hate relations of the women in this book, their struggles are so engaging that you don't want to put it aside, even for a moment. Delightful, well written. A very real portrayal of the plight of so many women who are victims of abuse and who have not been able to stand up against it either because of love or fear. A very serious subject has been handled with such care. A must read. Would recommend it to others too.
    • 5/5
      Warm funny story told from four perspectives of the lives of for women associated with a serially abusive Irish politician. THe use of different type faces to emphasise the distinction between the narrators is cute but effective. One of the voices uses an increasingly curtailed style with no pronouns, which becomes irksome towards the end. The gentle mockery of the characters and several small running jokes softens the ferocity of the domestic violence and the despair of alcohoicism that are core themes.
    • 5/5
      A book with many layers - it is whimsical and serious. It tells of four women, all connected, and how they cope with the news of a certain man and for some, the past. I didn't have a big problem with Lola's (a character) style of writing once I got used to it. It was actually fun and I feel it suited Lola. Marnie (also a character) gives the book much depth.It is quite a unique book, especially regarding the layout, so it did take me a while to adapt to the beginning, but after that, I was hooked. The ending was not the best though.I enjoyed reading this book, its range of themes and life-lessons, and for also being witty.
    • 3/5
      not her best, but an interesting twist on her previous novels.
    • 4/5
      Fun and frivolous on the surface but, like many of Marian Keyes's novels, deals with a darker issue. A great read!
    • 3/5
      Took a while to get into. Character Lola was a little difficult to read. Couldn't put it down for last 100 pages
    • 3/5
      alright, I figured Laura just had a bug up her butt =) but she was right on. Lola's pov (how it was written anyway) was really distracting. I know it was in diary form, but who writes for so long with no possesive nouns, or gaps in verbs/adjectives at least she was indiscriminate in what words would be missing. The passages were so annoying because I would unconsciously pause to fill in the words that were missing! Other than that, Keye's does not disappoint. I love the story and how suddenly it all began to make sense. She is a true talent.
    • 3/5
      I wasn't sure I should bother finishing the book. I didn't care about the characters and the way the Lola character and her friends talked really drove me crazy (it was like it was improperly translated from another language and missing half the words needed to form sentences). I decided to give it 200 pages, since I read quickly. By around 180 or so I got interested in one of the characters.I finished the book and enjoyed most of the characters' sections from that point on, though Lola still drove me crazy. Not sure I'd recommend it, but if you find it lying around it might be worth the few hours it'd take to read.
    • 4/5
      Again combining light hearted chick lit fiction with a dark element, Keyes does not disappoint with this book. Her characters are as lively as ever, and you love the ones you're meant to, and despise the ones you're meant to. This is a fun, if sometimes heavy, read.
    • 4/5
      Another winner from Marian Keyes, mixing humour with dark subject matter, this time about domestic violence. Reading this book was like chatting to a close friend. The characters are as strong here as in any of her books; the writing as fluid.
    • 4/5
      Great book, as hers always are - to the extent that I read nearly 900 pages in 2 days. I really have a soft spot for Marian Keyes. She has a way of tackling difficult and scary subjects (domestic abuse, alcoholism, depression, bereavement) with a light and humourous touch. She also writes with an Irish accent, which I love. And I think I'm the only person who really enjoyed the diary style of Lola's sections.I would thoroughly recommend this, though at the risk of being sexist, I don't think men would go for it too much!
    • 2/5
      I have to say I was a little disappointed with this book. I didn't really enjoy the style of writing and find it a bit "swipswoppy" going from one chracter to another. Parts of the book were downright depressing too!
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book - I am a fan of Marian Keyes and really enjoy her style and the way that most of her books are set in Dublin and the surrounding areas. This book had a heavy topic running through (as many of her novels have over the years) but I thought this book handled it better than most of her other ones... I was somewhat disappointed in her last book - Is Anyone Out There? and I thought that this book was much much better. I thought the characters were well drawn and the story was very engaging - I particularly enjoyed Lola's story.
    • 4/5
      I adore Marian Keyes. I work with an Irish lady, and between Marian Keyes, Roddy Doyle and my co-worker, I am convinced that I need to read more from Irish writers. I've loved all of the books about the Walsh family, and would be hard pressed to choose a favourite. This book is not about the Walshes, but has grabbed me harder than any of her other books. Its got hard topics in it, but it has humour that kept me reading well after midnight, unable to put the book down. Her characters are real, strong, fragile, human, and yes, so very very funny. I still hope for another book about the Walshes, but this was an utterly fabulous read.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this read.
    • 4/5
      This was a bit different from Keyes normal chick lit. The plot dragged in the beginning but was glad that I stuck with it.
    • 4/5
      This book isn't the lighthearted Marion Keyes of "Watermelon". So it may not be the one you take to the beach. The charming man, Paddy, is a politician who treats women like dirt. The story focuses on four of the women whose lives he's ruined. It was an excellent read, but a little on the depressing side in some areas. Unfortunately, Paddy does not seem to get much in the way of punishment.
    • 4/5
      *trigger warning and possible spoiler alert*This book has a dark side that Marian Keyes's books do not normally have. She writes about abuse, specifically domestic abuse, and alcoholism. I enjoyed this book but would have preferred to see a harsher penalty for the abuser at the end. Part of the reason why I enjoy Keyes's books so much is the happy endings she provides. I expect 'fluffy' fiction to leave me satisfied with the outcome, and while 3 of the 4 women are left with a happy ending, you know what the 4th one is facing and it's unsettling.
    • 2/5
      This Charming Man by Marian Keyes Four women, all charmed by the same man at one time or another in their lives. Meet Paddy de Courcy, the "John F. Kennedy" of Dublin,Ireland. Then meet Lola, Grace, her twin sister Marnie and Alicia whose engagement to Paddy starts this ball rolling. Meet Lola first - her voice is written in the style of a diary or journal and is written in a type of short hand. The fact that it was extremely annoying to read this style aside, we learn very early how Lola,was devastated by Paddy's cruel way of breaking things off...thus we learn early on not to expect too much "charm" and a lot of cruelty from this man. Then comes Grace, a reporter and the strength of both her family and this story...then Marnie who we quickly learn is an depressed,alcoholic with suicidal tendencies, and also Grace's twin sister, and interspersed in bits and pieces in this story is Alicia, Paddy's new fiancee. To tell the truth I didn't really enjoy this novel, I found the women for the most part to be weak willed and naive...something that we do learn came from the hands, literally, of Paddy. And when it is time to dole out justice for what he's done, they turn to blackmailing him instead of going to the police. I had a major issue with this fact. If this was written for some sort of comic relief,to balnce the horrors of the rest of the book, it was in very poor taste. Perhaps in Ireland things are much different for women to be able to get justice from an abuser, even if he was a politician (or perhaps I'm just being naive?), but as an American woman in the 21st century, I found what they did to him to be false, childish, unbelievable and intolerable . I think that this was supposed to be of the "Chick-Lit" genre, but since it tackled such difficult subjects as alcoholism, depression, and terrible abuse against women, I was appalled at the flippant way this novel ended. yes he did get his just desserts, just not the way I would have liked to see it happen. Very Chick-Lit ending to a very deep subject matter..