Library Director’s Notebook
July, 2013
Maeve Binchy, one of modern day Ireland’s most beloved writers died in 2012, leaving behind countless readers and friends to mourn her passing. Her last novel A Week in Winter was published posthumously and will no doubt be read with a certain bitter sweetness by her fans, who have come to rely on a new Binchy to read with pleasurable regularity.
Maeve Binchy was a storyteller who loved people, wanted them to be happy and fulfilled, and tried whenever she could to find a happy ending for her characters. Most of the people in Binchy novels are good people with good intentions who might blunder and sometimes bluster but who are nearly always responsive to kindness and compassion. Binchy knew people could be cruel, vengeful, abusive, manipulative, and destructive, but she gave short shrift to theories of absolute evil, nihilism, or existentialism. Her characters are imperfect but perfectible; when offered a solution or shown the way to live a happier life, most of Binchy’s people go for it.
In A Week In Winter we have the familiar and endearing Binchy elements of a warm, loving description of a small Irish town, peopled with a cast of characters who are eccentric, eager, and wise in their own ways. The novel centers around the early life and misadventures of Chicky who leaves Ireland and her family at a very young age to take off with a good looking American hippie, despite her parents’ warnings. Abandoned by her handsome hippy, Chicky decides to face life alone in America, and more importantly, to build a better, independent life before returning to Ireland. Telling her surviving relatives that her “husband” was killed in a car accident, Chicky builds another life for herself, resurrecting a beautiful but decaying manor house, turning it into a charming, one-of-a -kind Inn for travelers looking for respite from their own demanding and damaging lives.
One by one her visitors arrive, each with his tale to share. There is an American movie star, jaded with his life of empty fame and fortune, a young Swedish accountant wearied by having to follow his imperious father in the family business, a librarian recovering from a disastrous love affair, a prospective daughter-in-law who must try to overcome the jealous machinations of her soon-to-be mother-in-law, and several other guests, each with their secrets, their worries, and their fears.
Little by little, with the combination of tentative but honest exchanges between strangers that quickly blossom into trusting friendships, the good food, the wild beautiful scenery, and the all encompassing compassion of Chicky, their host, each guest learns something of great value to take back with them to their “real” lives. All except one guest, who resists every attempt to find joy in her life or be open to life’s blessings. Well, I guess there’s always one in every crowd!
Reading Maeve Binchy is a dependable delight. There is an absence of malice towards her characters and towards the world that makes her books feel as refreshing as a cool, crisp salad on a hot and humid day. Yes, we need more than salad in our lives, and we need more than Binchy on our reading lists; but it feels great to find a writer who can make you believe, even for just a little while, that nearly all of life’s problems can be solved, with patience, compassion, love … and perhaps a trip to Ireland!
