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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Binchy, M. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Maeve Binchy was born in Dublin, Ireland on May 28, 1940. She received a B.A. from University College in Dublin in 1960. After teaching at a school for girls, she became a journalist, columnist and editor at the Irish Times. By 1979, she was writing plays, a successful television script, and several short story collections.
Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982. During her lifetime, she wrote more than 20 books including Silver Wedding, Scarlet Feather, Heart and Soul, Minding Frankie, and A Week in Winter. The Lilac Bus and Echoes were made into TV movies, while Circle of Friends, Tara Road and How About You were made into feature films. Her title Chestnut Street is a New York Times Best Seller. She died after a brief illness on July 30, 2012 at the age of 72.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
YAWith the popularity of the film version of Binchy's Circle of Friends, this story, which traces the developments in the lives of two young friends in a small Irish town in the '50s, is likely to have wide appeal. The heroine, Kit, is shown to be at odds with her best friend, Clio, from the first scene. The differences in their values and emotions persist and separate them as the years pass. The life of Kit's beautiful mother unfolds in a concurrent plot line. Helen is generally believed to have died in a tragic drowning. She has, however, gone off with a lover. The story of her business successes and romantic complexities parallels her daughter's years of maturing, providing Kit and readers with ironic insights as she and a very few of the townspeople become aware of the woman's new life. A big, easy, comfortable read.Frances Reiher, King's Park Library, Burke, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Irish novelist Binchy's latest saga of family loyalties and secrets spent 12 weeks on PW's bestseller list. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Binchy (The Copper Beach, 1992, etc.) once again chronicles friends and neighbors in village and town, but here she elongates her tale into a 592-page taffy pull. It's all about a woman who deserts husband and children for a handsome lover, is dead to her family and village, but blossoms in the big city and touches her daughter's life. The McMahon household--kind, dull pharmacist Martin; daughter Kit; and son Emmett--are mourning wife and mother Helen. Dreamy, restless, fond of long walks, Helen apparently drowned in the local lake. But in fact she fled to London with blindingly handsome Louis Gray, ``the man she thought of...every time Martin made love to her.'' (Louis's bolt years before to marry a rich woman was, he said, ``a mistake.'') Helen, now ``Lena,'' pregnant by Louis (there will be a miscarriage), left a letter for Martin telling all. But young Kit, fearing that Mother might be a suicide and therefore not rate a church burial, burns the letter unread. In London, Lena makes a smashing success of a small employment agency, doing Good Works along the way. Louis is climbing in the hotel biz, but his philandering glands are humming again. Kit, a high schooler, is puzzled and pleased one day to have a letter from Lena, a self- styled ``friend of Helen,'' and a pen-palship develops. Will she ever know The Truth? Years pass, there are marriages and young love problems, and an old love sours. In the village the young folks fix up a moldering hotel for a grand ball. On the night of the ball, hidden in shadows--yup, you guessed it. The only genuinely touching tale here is that of a hermit nun who listens, as others can't, to the still, small voice of compassion. Top-heavy with coincidence, improbables, and sentiment. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
Lough Glass ("green lake" in Gaelic) is the one-street Irish village to which pharmacist Martin McMahon brought his lovely bride, Mary Helena Healy, before World War II. Dubliner Helen loved a man who had deserted her, but promised she would be honest with Martin and would do her best to love him. When Helen leaves in 1952, she writes Martin a note, but her 12-year-old daughter, Kit, knowing Helen was unhappy and fearing she has drowned herself, burns the note. Weeks later, a body is found and identified as Helen McMahon. Binchy follows the McMahons and their friends through the next 10 years: Helen (now Lena) poses as the wife of her feckless lover, Louis Gray, and builds up a successful employment agency in London; Kit, her brother Emmet, her friend Clio, and other young villagers pass through adolescence to university and professional schools; and Martin McMahon finally discovers a more comfortable sort of marital love with Clio's aunt, Maura. Weaving through these years are Helen/Lena's efforts to help her daughter and maintain some sort of contact, which spunky Kit first welcomes, then rejects, and finally learns to cherish. Another satisfying if sentimental read from the best-selling author of Circle of Friends (1991) and The Copper Beech (1992). (Reviewed January 1, 1995)0385313543Mary Carroll
Library Journal Review
Fans of Binchy's novels (e.g., Circle of Friends, LJ 12/90) won't be dissatisfied with her latest effort. Once again, she focuses on the inhabitants of a small town in Ireland. Helen, wife and mother of the McMahon household, is presumed to have drowned in a nearby lake. Actually, she shook off her dull, staid life and fled to London with her lover. Successful at business, she yearns for some communication with her now teenaged daughter, Kit. She begins a casual correspondence with Kit under the guise of being an old friend of her mother. The story continues with readers wondering if and when Kit will discover the truth about her mother and what impact that realization will have on their lives. Binchy writes a good tale, demanding that her readers accept the improbable and appreciate a well-timed coincidence. Suitable if not necessary for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/94.]-Margaret Hanes, Sterling Heights P.L., Mich. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.