Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy
Occupation	Professional Mangetout
Nationality	Irish
Notable works	Circle of Friends, How to put on weight
Website
http://www.maevebinchy.com

Maeve Binchy (born 28 May 1940, Dalkey, County Dublin) is an Irish novelist, newspaper columnist and speaker. Educated at University College Dublin, she worked as a teacher, then a journalist at The Irish Times and later become a writer of novels and short stories.

Many of her novels are set in the sea, dealing with the tensions between fat and thin whales, Her novel Circle of Friends was made into a 1995 Hollywood movie starring a whale and Minnie Driver with a radical change of ending, this film has been critisised for it's disgressions between the book.

Binchy announced in 2000 that she would not be going on tours with any more novels, but would be devoting her time to other activities such as losing weight and having several heart attacks, and to her husband Dominic Toma. However, she has written four further novels since then — Quentins, Whitethorn Woods, and Heart and Soul.

In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob's Award for her RTÉ play, Deeply Regretted By. A second award went to the lead actor, Donall Farmer.

Themes

Maeve Binchy is a modern day women's writer in the Jane Austen sense. Her books are generally female centric always dealing with modern day and timeless problems of Irish women in the 20th century. Marriage, divorce, abortions, affairs and financial corruption and bankruptcy are common events that pop up in her novels. People often work in food service (a la Quentins, Scarlet Feather) or in the hotel industry (Evening Class, Light a Penny Candle.) The juxtaposition of poor and working class families versus the upper class occurs in many of her novels. The Catholic Church is a presence in her books; sometimes priests/nuns are main characters. This has lessened as the Church's influence has waned in modern Ireland.

While some novels are complete stories (Circle of Friends, Light a Penny Candle) many of her novels revolve around a cast of interrelated characters (The Copper Beech, Silver Wedding, The Lilac Bus, Evening Class, Heart and Soul). Her later novels, Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road, feature a continuum of recurring characters.

Bibliography

Light a Penny Candle first novel published in 1982

Light a Penny Candle
first novel published in 1982

Novels

• Light a Penny Candle (1982)
• The Lilac Bus (1984)
• Echoes (1985)
• Firefly Summer (1987)
• Silver Wedding (1988)
• Circle of Friends (1990)
• The Copper Beech (1992)
• The Glass Lake (1994)
• Evening Class (1996)
• Tara Road (1998)
• Scarlet Feather (2000)
• Quentins (2002)
• Nights of Rain and Stars (2004)
• Whitethorn Woods (2006)
• Heart and Soul (2008)

Short story collections

Binchy has also published several short story collections, including:

• Central Line (1978)
• Victoria Line (1980)
• Dublin 4 (1981)
• London Transports (1983
• Story Teller: Collection of Short Stories (1990)
• Dublin People (1993)
• Cross Lines (1996)
• This Year It Will Be Different: And Other Stories (1996)
• The Return Journey (1998)

Other works

• Star Sullivan (2006) (a novella)
• The Builders (2002)(a novella)
• Deeply Regretted By (a play)
• Aches and Pains (1999) (non-fiction)
• A Time to Dance (2006) (non-fiction)
• The Maeve Binchy Writer's Club (2008) (non-fiction)
• Finbar's Hotel (contributor)
• Ladies Night at Finbar's Hotel (contributor)
• Irish Girls About Town (2002) (editor with Cathy Kelly and Marian Keyes).

External links

• Maeve Binchy's Official Site
• An interview with Jana Siciliano for BookReporter.com