Year III
March 1 to March 31
Omagh
"At Least There'll be Diamonds" by Martina Devlin by Martina Devlin is a thoroughly entertaining story about a woman who is on a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam to marry her fabulously wealthy finance. Crystal, she legally changed her name to that from "Anne" when the aunt she was named for died and left her considerable amount of money to a charity. For seven years now she has been working on her ambition of marrying mega-money. She already has the trappings of it including a Prada bag and expensive clothes. On the plane she somehow cannot get upgraded so she has to undergo the degradation of flying coach. She sits next to a business man and tries to fend off his conversation. All she can think about his how wonderful her life will be after she marries Terry. She is very snobbish and seems to have no attractive qualities besides her expensive looks. She does reveal to the business man, it is easy to open up to strangers on a plane you will never see again, that she wants to live in Dublin not Amsterdam, I mean what is the point of marrying money if you cannot flaunt it in the face of your old work and school mates?
Some people are going to see this story as one that turns on an ending that pulls the rug out from under us and this is an accurate comment. It is in the O. Henry surprise ending mode, with a 21th century twist that I did not see coming. I laughed when I read it.
I enjoyed reading this story. It was a funny story with a central character that is very hard to like. Maybe the ending of the story will change your perception of her.
I would be happy to read more work by Martina Devlin. I read this story in Irish Girls are Back in Town
Author Data (from her webpage)
Martina Devlin is a bestselling author and award-winning journalist. She has had seven books published including the number one best-seller Banksters, a co-authored account of the Irish banking collapse written with RTÉ's David Murphy.
Other work includes Ship of Dreams, a novel about the Titanic – inspired by a family connection with the disaster – and a memoir, The Hollow Heart. She started writing fiction after winning a Hennessy Literary Award for her first short story in the 1996, and has been shortlisted twice for the Irish Book of the Year awards.
A former Fleet Street journalist, she writes weekly columns for the Irish Independent, and contributes essays to RTÉ Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany. In 2011 she was named National Newspapers of Ireland columnist of the year. In 2010 she was GALA columnist of the year. In 2009 she was writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.
Martina has an MPhil in Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College Dublin. She was born in Omagh and lives near the sea in Dublin.
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