BOOK OF THE DAY:The Return Journey By Maeve Binchy
Orion Books, 294pp, £18.99
WHEN I picked up The Return Journeyand sat down at my kitchen table, the voices on a radio in the background were complaining about Nama, bad banking, Fás, waste, lies and disappointment. Within minutes all the voices were gone and I was transported to a better place.
That is the magic Maeve Binchy has always worked with her deft and gentle story-telling. While she explores differing worlds, lives and lifestyles in this collection of short stories, her trademark warmth and wisdom holds everything together so that reading it is as satisfying and absorbing as getting lost in one of her novels.
The 14 stories in the collection are based around trips, long and short, that take the characters on journeys of the heart.
Take Freda and Gina, mother and daughter, who live in America. Gina believes her mother is paranoid and untrustworthy; Freda is scared of losing her daughter but determined to stay in some sort of control.
Gina escapes to her mother’s hometown in Ireland. They communicate by letter and it is only when they are thousands of miles apart – arguing, exploring the past, revealing themselves, grudgingly at first and then willingly – that they finally start to reconnect. Eventually an embattled Freda gets to the point of declaring her love for her daughter, but the story is a reminder that love is never easy.
Another kind of love that’s not easy is unrequited love.
Lena is a young executive who has been holding a candle for her boss for years. When she goes on a business trip, it turns into an exploration of this love that seems so real to her. Although she doesn’t really know her boss, she’s sure she loves him. Maggie, her aunt and voice of reason, isn’t so sure.
Over the course of two days Lena’s eyes are opened. At one point Maggie declares herself to be Lena’s guardian angel, so turning out to be a classic Binchy creation – a wise older woman who takes a younger, somewhat misguided woman in hand.
Maggie may be a guardian angel, but she’s no angel – she’s playful and real and modern and the kind of fairy godmother every woman should have.
Binchy is also fantastic on women's ability to connect and in The Crossingwe're introduced to another female duo, Mary and Lavender, who for reasons of nationality and age might never normally meet but who find common ground during a short encounter on a ship.
Mary is Irish, Lavender is English. Mary is a young mum and Lavender is middle-aged. They are thrown together on the deck and in no time at all they find themselves sharing details of their lives: Mary, her husband and two children are estranged from her in-laws; Lavender is losing her daughter to a boy and to crime. In each other they find compassion, perspective and a sweet moment of companionship.
Each of the tales in The Return Journeyis as beautifully put together and thought-provoking as these three. Reading the book was a welcome break from reality – from the voices on the radio telling me the country was gone to hell, from the interminable hours sitting in a hospital A&E while my husband waited to be seen, from the helter-skelter madness of the dogs running around the park while I was sat under a tree.
Wherever I was, I didn’t want to say goodbye to what Maeve had drawn me into. Though we live in a cynical world, I’m happy to report that Maeve Binchy remains untouched.
Anna McPartlin's latest novel, So What If I'm Broken, has just been published by Poolbeg Press