The Woman Who Stole My Life. Marian Keyes. POOTLED.mobi

Published November 6th 2014.



Stella Sweeney is a Dublin beauty therapist and mother whose chaotic life is transformed when she develops Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disease that leaves her unable to move anything but her eyelids for months on end.



After her hard-won recovery, she writes a self-help book called One Blink At A Time, full of down-to-earth philosophical maxims like “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”, and it becomes an international bestseller. Its success sees Stella cast as a kind of Mother Theresa wise woman when, in reality, she is a chaotic, flaky working mother spouting her Granny Locke’s homespun sayings.Marian Keyes (born 10 September 1963) is an Irish novelist and non-fiction writer, best known for her work in women's literature. She is an Irish Book Awards winner. Over 22 million copies of her novels have been sold worldwide and her books have been translated into 32 languages. She became known worldwide for Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, and This Charming Man, with themes including domestic violence and alcoholism.



Born in Limerick and raised in Monkstown, Keyes graduated from Dublin University with a law degree. After completing her studies, Keyes took an administrative job before moving to London in 1986. During this period she developed alcoholism and clinical depression, culminating in a suicide attempt and subsequent rehabilitation in 1995 at the Rutland Centre in Dublin, Ireland.



Keyes began writing short stories while suffering from alcoholism. After her treatment at the Rutland Centre she returned to her job in London and submitted her short stories to Poolbeg Press. The publisher encouraged her to submit a full-length novel and Keyes began work on her first book, Watermelon. The novel was published the same year.



Since 1995 she has published 12 novels and three works of nonfiction. After a long hiatus due to severe depression, a food title, Saved by Cake, was released in February 2012. Keyes currently lives in Dún Laoghaire with her husband Tony Baines, after returning to Ireland from London in 1997.



Keyes has written frankly about her clinical depression., which left her unable to sleep, read, write, or talk.



In 2014, after Keyes went on Marian Finucane's RTÉ One show to talk about her new book, she told her Twitter followers that Finucane had the "compassion and empathy of a cardboard box. Even my mammy called her a bad word".