18. Maeve Binchy "All I ever wanted to do, is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with."

Binchy was born in the town of Dalkey, Ireland on May 28, 1940. She was educated, and lives in Ireland, a land well known for its great storytellers. Firmly grounded in the Irish storytelling tra­dition, Binchy has earned a great popularity for her many novels and collections of short stories. She proved herself to be an immensely talented and successful writer.

Binchy was introduced into the joys of storytelling at an early age. Her mother; Maureen, and father, William, a prominent Dub­lin barrister, encouraged Binchy and her three siblings to be avid readers as well as to share stories at dinner and, as her brother William admits, nobody loved telling stories more than Maeve. She grew up in the quiet seaside town of Dalkey, about 10 miles south of Dublin. She was educated at the University College in Dublin, where she studied history and French.

After graduating in I960, she taught Latin, French, and history in a Dublin grade school and traveled much during summer vaca­tions. She proved so popular a teacher that parents of her students pooled their money to send her on a trip to Israel. Her father was so impressed by the letters she wrote describing Israeli life that he typed them up and sent them to the Irish Independent newspaper, That's how Maeve returned home to find, quite to her surprise, that she was now a published writer.

She soon got a job on The Irish Times as the women's editor. In the early 70s, she shifted to feature reporting, and moved to London. Binchy decided to take a chance and move to London to be with the man she'd fallen in love, Gordon Snell, a BBC broadcaster, the author of children's book, and mystery novelist.

Maeve married Gordon in 1977, and in 1980 they bought a one-bedroom cottage back in Binchy's old hometown of Dalkey. By this time she had already published two collections of her newspaper work and one of short stories. She decided to try to sell her first novel, Light A Penny Candle to the publisher. Maeve and her hus­band still live in that same Dalkey cottage, where they share an office, writing side by side. "All I ever wanted to do," she says, “is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with." She has unquestionably succeeded with that goal. Light A Penny Candle was followed by such bestselling works as Circle of Friends, the novel about the friendship of two girls from different social classes which was made into a successful movie adaptation, and Tara Road, the story of an Irish woman and an American woman who swap houses for a summer, is an engaging look at a friendship cobbled together from the unexpected intimacy of trading spaces.

Binchy has many New York Times bestsellers to her name and is consistently named one of the most popular writers in readers' polls in England and Ireland.

In addition to her books, Binchy is also a playwright whose works have been staged at The Peacock Theatre of Dublin, and was the author of a hugely popular monthly column called "Maeve's Week," which appeared in The Irish Times for 32 years. A kind of combined gossip, humor, and advice column, it achieved cult status in Ireland and abroad.

Scarlet Feather, published in March 2001, was both a critical and a commercial success going on to earn the number 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list when published in paperback a year later by New American Library. It was followed by her new book, Quentins.

The Circle of Friends. It's a story about young people, their friendship, love, fortunes and misfortunes, loyalty and betrayal, their gains and losses.

Benny Hogan and Eve Malone, young women, grew up, insepa­rable, together in an Irish village of Knockglen. Benny - the only child, yearning to break free from her adoring parents... Eve - the orphaned offspring of a convent handyman and a rebellious blue-blood, abandoned by her mother's wealthy family after her mother died in childbirth and her father fell over the cliff into the quarry. And Eve was raised by nuns. Eve and Benny knew the sins and secrets behind every villager's lace curtains except their own. Ben­ny ruined the plans of both her father who, hoped that she would continue his business one day, and of Sean Walsh who cherished the dream to marry into the business, when Benny announced about her decision to enter a college. The lasting friendship of Eve and Benny continues when they go to study at University College in Dublin. They find their relationship tested by the new friendships, romanc­es and opportunities that develop at the university where Benny and Eve meet beautiful Nan Mahon, who tries to hide her poor background and drunken father, and Jack Foley, a doctor's hand­some son. First-year college students Benny and Eve are thrilled by the excitement of university life in Dublin. Jack Foley falls in love with beautiful Benny. Provincial Knockglen and fast-paced Dublin become intertwined as the girls try to exist in both worlds. Be­friended by Nan, a beautiful classmate with secret ambitions, they are widening their circle of friends that provides them with a happy sense of belonging and introduces them to a world of carefree activ­ity, mounting waves of loyalty and deceit and intrigues, successes and disappointments.

But heartbreak and betrayal soon brings .the worlds of Knockglen and Dublin into explosive collision. Jack betrays Benny and begins dating with Nan Mohan when Benny had not "taken off her clothes and lain down beside him, loved him generously and warm­ly, responded to him." The light-hearted existence is brought to an abrupt halt when Nan's selfish, callous plans backfire. She has a goal in her life - to leave her family by marrying a blueblood. And she has found a victim - Simon who is in search of a bride, a girl from a wealthy family. Nan gets pregnant, but when Simon learns that Nan is from the north side of Dublin, a poor district, that her father is not a wealthy builder, he refuses to marry her. And Nan tricks Jack Foley saying that he is father of her future child. She brought first Simon and then Jack to Knockglen and slept with them secretly in Eve’s bed. She victimizes Benny and creates within Eve an obsessive desire to avenge. When all their circle of friends gathers for a party in Eve's house (Jack and Nan also came al­though they had not been expected and were not welcomed warmly) Eve and Nan have a talk. Long-hidden lies emerge to test the mean­ing of love and strength of ties held within the fragile gold bands of a "circle of friends." Eve takes a knife and threatens to kill Nan.

" Nan wasn't near enough to reach the handle of the door to the sitting room. She backed away, bur Eve was still moving toward her, eyes flashing and the knife in her hand.

"Eve, stop!" she cried, moving as fast as she could out of range. She lurched against the bathroom door so hard that the glass broke.

Nan fell, sliding down on the ground, and the broken glass ripped her arm. Blood spurted everywhere, even on her face."

She is taken to the hospital where she receives several blood transfusions. Her life is saved but she miscarried.

Jack Foley tries to win Benny's heart again but Benny replies firmly "No, Jack, thank you." "Benny didn't want to wonder and watch over Jack for the rest of her life. If she went out with him now, it would be so easy. They would be back to where they had been before."

When they had a barbeque party in Dublin Jack appeared again. "Benny smiled the big, warm smile that had made him fall in love with her. Her welcome was real. She looked lovely in the light of the flames, and she did what no one else had done. She pointed him to where the drink was, where the long sticks lay for cooking the food. He opened a beer and moved slightly toward her."

Lecture 3. Angry Young Men Writers. The Generation of General Discontent