Little did Stella Sweeney imagine, when she became one of the few thousand people affected by the incredibly serious Guillain-Barré syndrome, that the illness would wind up changing her life almost entirely. The condition, which strikes suddenly and causes near-total paralysis, lands Stella in the hospital for several months, unable to feed herself, breathe on her own, or move anything except her eyelashes. But all that time stuck inside her own head gets her thinking --- a lot --- about her life.

Stella, who has been a somewhat incompetent beautician at her sister's rather sketchy salon, has always been more or less satisfied with her life. Sure, she has two teenaged kids who don't give her the time of day, and her husband Ryan, a frustrated artist turned extreme bathroom designer, works way too much. But that's how life works, right? You have a little of the good and a little of the bad, and if you're a good person, things all work out in your favor in the end.

"Readers may or may not be surprised by the plot twist that defines the book's final sections, but they are likely to be consistently frustrated, outraged and absorbed by the stories of Stella and the people who surround her."

Stella tries hard to keep this sunny disposition while in the hospital, but it becomes increasingly difficult when her kids seem to blame her for her illness and Ryan wants to be treated like a martyr when all he's doing is keeping up with at least some of the million household tasks Stella used to handle alone. The only person who seems invested in really hearing what Stella has to "say" is her neurologist, Mannix Taylor, who uses a system of blinks (inspired by those in THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) to help her communicate. The two of them develop an intense friendship, but just as Stella begins to recover, Mannix abruptly disappears. Did he fear getting too close to a patient?

When, in the wake of her recovery, a memoir/book of aphorisms that came out of her illness becomes an international bestseller, Stella embarks on a thoroughly unexpected second chapter, moving herself and the kids from Dublin to New York for a series of book tours. All of a sudden, Ryan is accusing her of stealing the artistic fame and fortune he himself never had, her kids hate her more than ever, and she's finding that being a bestselling author is just as hard as being a beautician ever was. Where's her measure of karma now?

Marian Keyes has become known as a writer whose novels effectively balance humor and pathos. THE WOMAN WHO STOLE MY LIFE is perhaps not as dark as some of her earlier work, but it does tackle serious topics in a more lighthearted way. Readers may or may not be surprised by the plot twist that defines the book's final sections, but they are likely to be consistently frustrated, outraged and absorbed by the stories of Stella and the people who surround her.