Turning Turtle - Reviews

The Irish Times, 5th April, 2003.

By Bernice Harrison

Denise Deegan has written a hugely enjoyable book that delves with an assured, smart tone into the big themes of marital fidelity, trust, ambition, money, and motherhood. Kim Waters is a power-dressing, busy PR executive in Dublin, with two small children and a handsome, successful and adoring husband. She’s smart enough to know that you can’t have it all and anyway flogging toilet cleaner is starting to get a bit old, so before she cracks up entirely she gives up her job to combine being a stay-at-home mom and a budding novelist. It’s a disaster. She very quickly finds that she can’t get started on the book, her marriage breaks up, she piles on weight, and she starts becoming someone she doesn’t recognise or even like. Deegan weaves in several sub plots and diverse characters from Kim’s glamorous and giddy friend to her wise mother, so the story never flags and she carries the snappy pace right through to the end of this entertaining and funny first novel.

The Irish Independent, 15th March, 2003

Books In Brief

Writer and freelance journalist Denise Deegan brings levity to a serious subject in her first novel. Turning Turtle (for the nautically challenged among us) means the capsizing of a yacht and draws a parallel with the overturning of a marriage.

Running her own successful PR company, Kim Waters seems to have it all. She’s married to the wonderful Ian, lives in a beautiful home, and has two adorable children, Chloe and Sam, and a super nanny, Sally.

However, when the children call for Sally rather than mum and best friend Sarah’s first novel is published, Kim decides to chuck it all and try to become a bestselling author – besides, she can spend more time with the children she loves but hardly knows.

But things don’t work out as Kim had envisaged. With the nanny gone, Kim finds the kids and house take up all her time and novel-writing isn’t as simple as it appeared. A domestic life becomes a drudge, Ian becomes more and more like Norm in Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room and then she discovers he is having an affair.

As the perfect life she had set up for herself begins to fall apart, mirroring Fay Weldon’s The Weekend, Kim has to face up to a revelation which calls into question everything she believes in. With sparkling dialogue and fast pace, Deegan breathes life into a cliché, taking old hat and turning it into Philip Treacy, creating a sort of haute chick lit with a great sense of fun.

Sunday Independent, 25th May 2003

ADVENTURES OF AN ESCAPEE FROM PR

Tale of a woman seeking fulfilment is a debut to be proud or, says Clodagh Finn

Anyone who has ever felt a gnawing discontentment invade their work day will rejoice at the spirit of Denise Deegan’s novel, Turning Turtle.

Her plucky heroine Kim Waters hungers for creative fulfilment and dreams of packing in her high-powered PR job in Dublin city to write The Great Novel.

High-powered is not all it was cracked up to be when, in her early days as a young eager professional, Kim brought her mobile phone into the labour ward. "Kim Waters PR – contactable between contractions," quipped at the time. But four years and another child later, she is sick of the 12-hour days, the tedium of trying to make toilet cleaner sound interesting and – most of all – missing her children’s bedtime.

After consulting family, friends and a somewhat reluctant husband, she takes a leap into the unknown and finds herself in front of a computer, sleeves rolled up, ready to compose The Great Work.

And the reader is there with her, every writing-postponing moment of the way. If you have ever studied for an exam, hesitated over writing an essay, a proposal, even a letter, you will enjoy Kim Waters’s endless supply of delaying tactics. She can’t possibly start without doing Feng Shui on the computer: spending hours erasing emails before getting distracted by one of them. She draws up lists, agonises over a title, procrastinates and eventually comes up with a set of Resolutions for the ‘New Me’.

All the empowerment-speak of the modern era is there. Our writer-housewife visualises, thinks positively and then, when she makes progress, gives herself "A high-five on an imaginary hand". But author Denise Deegan is at her wry best when describing the self-help-book culture. She has her protagonist pack "advice on how to live a happy, adjusted, rewarding, positive, sex-filled, fun, tantrum-free life" into a Brown Thomas bag and exchange the entire how-to-live kit for a 38euro credit note.

Deegan has created an utterly contemporary heroine. Her battles are the battles fought by a generation of women who are encouraged by endless media hype to try to squeeze themselves into any number of roles (Career Woman, Earth Mother, Creative Goddess) - and a size 10.

But Deegan’s heroine is one that appeals to ordinary women. Her life capsizes – or turns turtle, to use the expression that inspires the title. The walls of her home edge in a fraction each day as she finds she has "dumbed down" and has become the consumer she once sought to educate.

What follows is a quick-paced, intelligent personal adventure written in witty, fluid prose. Deegan spices up Kim’s journey of self-discovery with deceit, family secrets, a hidden passion and a friend who might be straight out of Sex and the City.

It is easy to classify Turning Turtle as chick-lit. It is a compelling page-turner that does not tax the reader too much. But this book also has something extra. It shines a light on modern urban living and prods and pokes in a few unsettling directions. One of them is the effect of marital discord on children. Deegan’s dialogue is always sharp and witty but she is particularly good at putting wisdom into the mouths of babes. Her study of Kim’s children, in particular Chloe, is excellent.

But then Denise Deegan and Kim Waters have much in common. Like her heroine, Ms Deegan left a job in PR in Dublin to pursue a career as a writer and spend more time with her children. The difference is that the happy ending in this case is real – Denise Deegan has written a first novel to be proud of.

Irish Examiner, 17th May 2003

By Deirdre O’Flynn

Denise Deegan is the latest female voice to hit the bookshelves, fitting snugly in the hierarchy between Cathy Kelly and Deirdre Purcell.

In her first book, Turning Turtle, she stays close to home, obeying the old adage of writing about what you know.

A former PR consultant herself who gave up the business to write this novel (with another in the pipeline), her heroine, Kim Waters, also runs her own PR business and gives it all up to…you’ve guessed it, write a novel.

But all is not what it seems – writing doesn’t come easily to Kim, nor does filling the dishwasher every day, signing along to Scoobydoo, and adjusting to full-time motherhood.

Deegan’s acute observations chart the changing fortunes of Kim: romantic lunches with husband Ian are replaced by frozen pizzas tossed in the oven.

Mornings spent picking out the perfect suit and pecking the kids on the cheek before rushing out to work are now dominated by children’s TV while Kim wonders where exactly the ‘old’ dynamic PR executive has gone.

And then, to cap it all, husband Ian goes off and has an affair with his female boss, sending Kim into a spiral of depression and recrimination.

Life has turned turtle – a sailing reference describing a boat that overturns. The challenge is to get the boat upright – exactly the task facing Kim as everything in life suddenly looks different.

This is the very strength of the book: the journey of self-discovery that her husband’s affair plunges her into reveals that everything in life is not as it seems.

Deegan draws her charactyers warmly, yet with subtle complexities: from her mother, whose ideal marriage hid its own secrets, to best friend Sarah, whose highly-sexed chase for the perfect man brings her uncomfortably close to home; and to Conor, whose long friendship with Kim turns into something else entirely.

The main character’s two children, Chloe and Sam, descent from a life dominated by carefree Cheerios, into childish confusion shows the high price little ones pay in a house now dominated by raised voices and tension.

And at the kernel of the novel is an examination of marriage itself: where needs start to differ and go unnoticed; where pointed comments cause another’s self esteem to plummet; and where sexual transgressions need not necessarily spell the end of the road.

Evening Herald, 3rd April, 2003

By Terry Prone

GOOD TURN SHOWS THE CHARM OF CHICKLIT

It’s sort of like the health warnings on cigarette packets. Go into any bookshop. Pick up one of the mass-market paperbacks with a pretty girl on the cover. Turn it over. There’s the health warning. It goes like this: ‘Anna (or Jackie or Kim) seems to have it all. A great career, a sexy lover (or loving husband), two delightful children.’

You know straight away, Anna (or Jackie or Kim) is in deep doo-doo. Going to be punished for having it all. Sexy lover (or loving husband) is going to turn out to be two-timing them. Great career is going to go belly-up. Anna (or Jackie or Kim) is going to get fat and frumpy. Serves her right, the moral seems to suggest, for having it all in the first place.

On the face of it, Turning Turtle is just another of these. In this case, it is Kim (not Anna or Jackie) who’s headed for life’s dumpster. She owns her own PR company, does Kim, and it’s doing nicely, thank you, except that she’s getting to the point where she wants not just to say ‘thank you’ but ‘over and out’. Particularly ‘out’. Kim’s fed up placating clients, licking up to journalists and not getting home until after her two kids are in bed. With the warm agreement of her loving husband, she ditches the job and goes home to mind the kids and write her novel.

She gets a brief idyll before things begin to go bendy on the home front. But bendy they go, very quickly. The loving husband starts to make reproving noises when he sees the kids starting the day with TV.

The first chapters of the novel, shared with friends, turn out to be as riveting as a stale sliced pan. Shorn of her DKNY suits and her sheer stockings, she sees her weight creeping up. Domesticity develops more downsides than upsides.

So far, so predictable. Nothing special – except the writing. Denise Deegan writes like a tap dancer on speed. Before you know where you are, she’s told you where you are: on Kim’s side. Because Kim’s funny and frazzled. But most of all, because even when Kim’s life begins to go from under her like a yanked chair, it all happens briskly. No boring bits.

Kim had a father she adored, who’s dead, and a mother who looks like Judi Dench and is alive. Like any decent Irish mother, Kim’s is there when the fan is on the receiving end of bad stuff. More than sympathy and gifts, she’s there to hammer home one of the arresting themes of this clever book: how every generation underestimates the complex challenges met by their parents.

Long before the end, the reader knows this is a new angle on an old story, written with charm and understated skill. Don’t miss it.

Ireland on Sunday, 13th April 2003

By Martina Devlin

CRITICS’ CHOICES

On the surface, thirtysomething Kim has the perfect life: her own PR company, a handsome, successful husband and two children. But she wonders whether it’s that flawless after all.

She spends her life juggling, trying to keep her clients happy, make it home for her children’s bedtime and still fit in the odd dinner with her husband.

Kim decides to change her life radically and gives up work to stay at home.

Since she’s an overachiever by nature, however, she thinks she may as well write a bestseller as well – except she suffers from writer’s block, her marriage starts to develop fault lines and she piles on the pounds – the power-dressed executive turns into a frump.

Suddenly, Kim realises her scheme has gone seriously awry…

Denise Deegan’s poised debut novel tackles themes of marital infidelity, ambition and motherhood with aplomb. A polished, pacy read, it’s a story told with wit that will ring true for many women.

Dublin Daily, 19th May 2003

Tivoli is the new fiction imprint of Gill & Macmillan, and Turning Turtle, the debut novel by a freelance journalist, Denise Deegan, is one of their first offerings.

The story revolves around Kim Waters, a woman who appears to have everything – a rich husband, two lovely children, her own PR firm and a beautiful suburban home.

But Kim isn’t happy and fulfilled. She’s sick of the superficial world of PR and yearns to write Ireland’s next great novel.

So in a fit of frustration, she gives up her job and settles down to become a domestic goddess and the next best thing in the world of publishing. However, the dream rapidly turns sour.

Deegan is a sparkling and promising writer. She writes from the heart, and you will find yourself nodding along with some of the sharper scenes in the book.

CLIPS FROM INTERVIEWS

The Irish Times, 2nd April

Deegan writes with a wry and witty ear for dialogue and captures well the manners of a middle-class marriage…The book is an engaging page-turner, which has you caring whether Kim and Ian work out their problems. As popular fiction it also catches a contemporary mood. Life balance is in vogue as an issue, as working parents struggle with careers, commuting and family.

RTE Guide, 4th April, 2003 …one of Ireland’s most promising and incisive young writers, Denise Deegan.

Southside People, 21st May, 2003 ... Turning Turtle is an honest, witty account of a thirtysomething woman who moves in the circles of middle class Dublin with a successful career, two perfect children and a perfect husband.