Marian Keyes interview: 'I was just so frightened all the time'

MARIAN Keyes has said she wrote her latest book, The Mystery of Mercy Close, in the grip of ‘a nervous breakdown’.

It must feel miraculous that it got written at all.

“It does. I’m amazed,” she agrees. “I really, really thought I’d never be able to write again. I had long months of catatonic, unable-to-get-out-of-bedness and then long months of this incredible fear, in the grip of panic. So the book was written very peculiarly. There was no steadiness to it. It took much longer than anything else I’ve written … I veered off into making cakes for about a year. I was wondering quite seriously: ‘Could baking be my job?’ And I’m still not 100%, so anything I managed to produce is a miracle.”