Tick-tock goes the biological clock

Fiction:Dubliner Denise Deegan's fourth novel delves into one of the most talked-about relationship issues of the moment: the biological clock.

Whether it is ticking, not ticking or ticking so loudly it's threatening to burst the eardrums of the characters, it has been the theme of a slew of popular fiction novels lately, with varying degrees of success. Deegan, as she has tended to do in novels such as Love Comes Tumbling and Time in a Bottle, tackles the subject with originality and a determination to avoid the most obvious scenario.

Rory, an ambitious doctor, and Louise, who has just started her own business, are happy in their relationship and neither one desires those ties that bind, whether marriage or babies. Until, that is, Rory experiences a harrowing, life- threatening experience at work and, almost overnight, transforms his life goals. What he now wants is not what Louise wants, hence the title.

The incident at work causes Rory to examine his own family bonds and whether his difficult relationship with his overbearing father may have informed his ambivalence towards starting a family of his own. With his new zeal for babies and marriage, he begins spending more time with sister-in-law Orla, who has been abandoned by his brother. She not only has a teenage daughter but is fostering a young boy, Jason, who, with his urban wit and poignant backstory, is one of the best-drawn and most endearing characters in the book. In Orla's busy family life, Rory discovers a life he craves. It's no surprise when Louise leaves in the face of his all-consuming broodiness.

Rory is left broken and on regular "hottie patrol" with a group of still-single college mates. (Hottie patrol? Where are we, the Valley? And I don't mean Liffey Valley.)

Throw in an abortion, a not entirely believable segment about a potential sperm donation, and the death of a parent, and the book rattles along towards the dramatic but not entirely surprising climax.

Deegan's fourth novel features sufficient twists and turns to keep the interest. Unfortunately, the first-person narrative, while it works well in the more dramatic parts, is wearing after a while.

ALISON JAMESON'S DEBUT novel, This Man and Me, was well-received for the sparse beauty of her writing and the originality of her observations about love, life, death and family. Her second book, Under My Skin, does not disappoint and the sheer elegance of her prose even manages to make up for the fact that underpinning this gorgeous, intelligent novel is a huge coincidence which forces the reader to suspend all disbelief.

Still, this is a novel that unashamedly plays with the notion of coincidence versus accident, so the above is not necessarily a criticism. Hope and Larry are soulmates, the kind of couple whose devotion to each other is almost unreal in its quiet, kooky intensity. Young and in love, they marry - but not in the conventional way. The unofficial ceremony takes place in a sitting room with Hope in an animal-print coat and Larry wearing a top hat and an eyepatch. But the relationship that seemed unassailable begins to crumble when Hope takes a job in an advertising agency. A former copywriter herself, Jameson draws on her experience of this world to good effect. It's a world which seduces Hope in more ways than one.

Larry leaves. Hope is left rudderless, realising the enormity of what she has let go and at a loss as to how she might regain it. Through beautifully crafted flashbacks we have already learned more about her dark past, the tragedies she witnessed as a young girl, the reasons why she seems to be floating, without an anchor, through life.

She travels to New York, and here Jameson manages something which has defeated more established writers - she weaves 9/11 into the novel without it seeming either opportunist or gratuitous. Hope meets up with Matilda, a Marilyn Monroe obsessive she has only previously conversed with online. She also becomes embroiled in another love story with an, until now, commitment-phobic older man called Glassman.

The coincidence which is revealed here could irritate, but it's better to surrender to Jameson's almost fairytale-like storytelling and just believe. One of her great skills is her depiction of lost souls, those people without a steady place in the world who are searching for somewhere to dock. There is a vulnerable quality to her writing, along with a biting humour that never descends into cliché and sentences that are so effortlessly beautiful that I wanted to read them twice. Jameson is a rare talent in a sea of often mediocre popular fiction aimed at women. I couldn't wait for her second book to hit the shelves and now I can't wait for the next one.

Under My Skin By Alison Jameson Penguin Ireland, 310pp. €14.99

Do You Want What I Want? By Denise Deegan Penguin Ireland, 358pp. £14.99

Róisín Ingle is an Irish Times journalist, and presenter of Weekend Blend on Newstalk 106-108