Anatomy of a marriage that dispenses with the emotional plasters

Fiction: The Week I Ruined My Life, Caroline Grace-Cassidy, Black and White Publishing, pbk, 296 pages, €7.99

Dark tone: Caroline Grace-Cassidy lures us into an escapist illusion

Lorraine Courtney

'I am a mess. I am a woman who's in danger of losing her husband, but more importantly, of breaking up a family. I can't seem to control it. It's spiralling," Ali Devlin, the spiky narrator of Caroline Grace-Cassidy's fifth novel, tells us.

The book fits the mould of a chick-lit novel with its one-woman-two-guys storyline, but as the plot unravels in a haze of suburban dolour, author, actor and TV3 Midday panellist Grace-Cassidy develops it into more of a Springsteen-like reality check than a fairy tale.