Conditions
A read copy, but remains in excellent condition.
Formats
Conditions
A read copy, but remains in excellent condition.
Born in a small town in Dublin County, Ireland in 1940, Maeve Binchy Snell earned a B.A, degree from University College, Dublin. She worked as a history and Latin teacher in Dublin, then as a news reporter at The Irish Times. In the early 1980s, she published her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, using her maiden name Maeve Binchy as her pen name. She was the author of sixteen novels, many of which were international bestsellers, as well as radio dramas and television screenplays. One of her most successful novels, A Circle of Friends, was adapted into a movie of the same title, starring Minnie Glover and Chris O'Donnell. Tara Road, another bestseller, also became a film, starring Andie McDowell and Olivia Williams. Among the many honors she received, Binchy was awarded both the British Book and Irish Book Lifetime Achievement awards. She died in 2012, and her last book, A Week in Winter, was published later that year.
I recommend that you sit down by the fireplace or Christmas tree and read this book during the Holidays. It will make you feel great inside. The stories are short and heart-warming to the soul.
The atmosphere around the end of the year is always peculiar, it is specially "crazy", there's a lot of fuss, people are running here and there with their Christmas shopping, we experiment a plethora of mixed feelings and emotions such as melancholy and excitment, and it's mainly the time to think about and evaluate the finishing year. Binchy is a master at capturing these kinds of mood and expressing them in this outstanding collection of 15 short stories. There are some interesting ones about single women who date married men and their turning points that will arrive with the season. Again, the author offers us dialogues that make the characters real and believable - Binchy proves she is perfect at writing both short compact stories and long, full of details, engrossing novels. Pay special attention to "The Ten Snaps of Christmas", about a teenage girl who gets a Polaroid camera and decides to take some "secret pictures" as her Xmas day goes by. It shows readers how families can be hypocritical. What kinds of snapshots would we come across if we had the chance of taking them? And also enjoy the tale of a hard-working carer in an Australian home struggling with a group of four very difficult old people entitled "The Hard Core". After a year or so you will probably have forgotten many details, and it will be a pleasure to read these stories again and have some new insights.
I bought all of Maeve Binchy's books back in May. I saved this one for December because I figured it would be the perfect month to enjoy reading Christmas stories. Was I ever right!! This book was fantastic! Beats her other collections with a stick--and that's a tough job. Plus, the short story format is such a breath of fresh air. I caught myself driving down the road catching a glimpse of this book laying on the passenger seat and saying, "That right there is a great book!"
Maeve Binchy has povided a series of short stories about the holiday season and how it affects people. Many are bitter sweet, some are just plain sad, while others provide hope and insight. While some people may say that the character development is not what you would normally expect from a Binchy story, the fact that these are short stories make the task all the more impressive. Each story hits a nerve. My particular sensitive spot was relfected in the story of the "difficult" step daughter who eats all of the hors d'oerves to the horror of the step mom only to think that they were going to decorate her bedroom for her. An instant bond is built between the two women, one young and one old. Age differences, women in love with married men, widows dealing with the holidays and people with dreams. This is an excellent book for the holiday season. It is easy to read and would make an excellent gift.
As always, Binchy's stories stand out for two reasons: interesting, page turning plots and characters, and unpredictability. You may not be able to depend on happy endings and all loose ends neatly tied together in any of her fiction. But as always, you can look forward to learning something about human nature, and being highly entertained in the process. If you liked her other books, you will not be disappointed
