Maeve Binchy was born and grew up in County Dublin and spent some years in teach before joining the Irish Times as journalist and columnist. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, made her famous in the UK and USA. Since then she has written numerous No.1 bestselling novels, and two Quick Reads, most recently Full House, published February 2012. She lives in County Dublin with her husband, Gordon Snell.
Here, exclusively for Amazon readers, is Maeve on...
Nights of Rain and Stars
I used to love going to Greece when I was a young teacher: I had a crowd of friends who lived and worked there running villa party holidays and we got to know local people and felt part of the life in the village. Later and more sedately, Gordon and I went back to these places and I looked in horror at the high mountain tavernas where we as young people went on the back of rickety motorbikes, and the deep oceans where we swam full of retsina. I wondered how on earth we lived to tell the tale.
I loved the music, the beautiful flowers, the intensely blue sea and the friendly people. Being fairly familiar with parts of Greece, I felt I knew the place well enough to set a book there. In some ways, people are the same all over the world: they love and hope and dream, they do foolish and heroic things. They are unselfish and they are thoughtless, they laugh and they weep in every land - so I don't think it matters if I make them German, American, Irish or English like the four in my book. They feel the same as we do.
To be honest, there is a bit of me in Vonni. I am not a tiny elfin person like she is, I am not a recovering alcoholic, I am not a mother nor did I have such a tragic relationship with a husband. But on the other hand I did cash a cheque in the 1966 bank strike and went off to see the world, and I am very bossy and think I can run everyone else's lives for them.
And if you want to know what happens to Vonni and to Fiona after Nights of Rain and Stars, you can find out in Heart and Soul!
And Maeve on...
The Return Journey and other stories
I believe that to be a writer you have to be very interested in people and therefore you have to wonder why people do things and what motivates them. I get ideas from conversations and from listening to people. I can sit for ages watching people at airports or railway stations and wondering about their lives. It is a little like being a psychoanalyst - I never thought of that before! We all hope for the same things: a good, happy life, to be loved, to be successful, to be admired. Obviously we can't all succeed in all of these things all the time and I suppose I write about that struggle where people fail as well as win. I will never run out of ideas. If you look at people's faces in airports, cafes, on trains, in the street you can see stories written there. Is that man afraid his wife is unfaithful? Does that woman wish she had the courage to start dating again? It's written everywhere if you look.
I wrote the stories in this collection over many years for newspapers and magazines in Ireland and in England; for a long time I didn't want them published in a book for that reason. I always hated paying for a book only to discover I'd already read all the stories in it. Other countries, though, asked to publish some of the stories themselves and over time we gathered together two collections. This Year It Will Be Different is all about Christmas and the way expectation and reality can differ. The Return Journey is about travel: in my travels I've met so many interesting people with problems, hopes and dreams quite different from my own. They must have seeped into my mind because I do find myself recalling even people I scarcely knew.
I think travel is wonderful - I bless my kind parents who encouraged me to see the world even though they were nervous and anxious on my behalf.
Here are Maeve's books in publication order:
Novels:
Light a Penny Candle
Echoes
The Lilac Bus
Firefly Summer
Silver Wedding
Circle of Friends
The Copper Beech
The Glass Lake
Evening Class
Tara Road
Scarlet Feather
Quentins
Nights of Rain and Stars
Whitethorn Woods
Heart and Soul
Minding Frankie
Collections of short stories:
Victoria Line, Central Line (London Transports)
Dublin 4
This Year It Will Be Different
Return Journey
Plays:
Deeply Regretted By
Novella:
Star Sullivan (Quick Read)
Full House (Quick Read)
Non Fiction:
Aches and Pains
The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club
