I once read an
anthology of Christmas stories while recuperating on the hottest day
of the year. Such is the power of Maeve Binchy.
Taking time out from
editing my own novel to dust off this blog takes a fair splattering
of motivation and the surprising news of Binchy's death after a quick
illness resulted in a genuine swallow hard moment. I was a fan and
with two books of hers yet to read on my shelves (on a beach
somewhere hopefully), I still am.
I first stumbled across
her work ten years ago. I picked up Tara Road in a car boot sale in
the early noughties, so I'm a bit of a late-comer but sadly for her
estate she hasn't profited from my fandom. I've never bought a book
of hers from a bookshop but I would like it to be known I was hooked
by her Dublin streets.
I wonder, if like all
those homeless northeners lured here to London in the eighties by the
promise of an Eastenders community spirit, whether the same happened
in Ireland. With intertwined characters in neighbouring streets all
falling in love but perhaps more importantly, looking out for each
other, she sold Ireland to the feckless. We know this sweet and
increasingly outmoded image is fallacy but that's the job of the
exceptional dramatist, to lure us into a world and make us buy the
dream. She managed this.
Accessible and simply
written, I wonder if Binchy's books would fit under the 'intelligent
women's fiction' umbrella (as adopted by The Bookseller recently,
before swiftly disappearing again) because as former Irish Times
columnist and London editor, they rarely come smarter
than her. Sure, she's no tense experimenter like Maggie O'Farrell or
sculptor of the forgotten word like Rachel Cusk, but unlike these
two she wrote books I couldn't put down. As an emerging writer
myself, I have some idea of how phenomenally difficult this is to
achieve.
Maeve Binchy (born
County Dublin, 28 May 1940)
