Maeve Binchy Heart and Soul (2008)

     Maeve Binchy Heart and Soul (2008) The title alludes to the setting: a newly established cardiac clinic in Dublin hospital. There are hints of office politics, but Binchy’s real interest has always been love and courtship. Bad things do happen (Dr Declan Carroll is severely injured in a car accident), and bad people take advantage of good people (Ania is seduced), but these events are little more than bumps in the road. Dr Carroll makes an almost perfect recovery within weeks, Ania (hard worker that she is) earns enough money to set her mother up in a proper shop, and she and Nick will be married despite Nick’s mother, who gets a well-deserved comeuppance. The cardiac clinic will continue, as Clara discovers that merely setting it up isn’t enough. She now has a team that works.
     Binchy writes the kind of romantic fantasy in which even the most fraught courtships end happily, or at least amicably. No one is permanently deprived of their one true love. Everyone pairs up at the end, and the horizon glows with sunshine and rainbows. One almost sees bunnies cavorting in the lush grass, nibbling the flowers. Bad things happen, but they are almost entirely random accidents. The bad people are either thwarted and disappear, or suffer a change of heart and become nice people (albeit sometimes grudging ones). In Binchy’s world, evil doesn’t exist.
     You might infer from the above that I didn’t like the book. You’d be wrong. I loved it. The fantasy is so disarmingly presented, the narrative moves so swiftly, each character’s backstory is so thoroughly explored, that one can’t help being drawn into the story. Binchy’s world may seem to be a naive fantasy, but the fact is that kindness, decency, joy in simple things, knowledge of what one really wants and willingness to work for it, are virtues that do make people’s lives better. That Binchy can’t bear to look evil in the face doesn’t diminish this truth.
     People with gloomier outlooks writing gloomier books may fancy themselves as being more realistic, but gloom and doom is just another fantasy. I’ve just begun The Murder Room by P D James, and while she is willing to gaze into the face of evil and show us the harm even minor vices can do, James also believes that kindness, decency, and joy in simple things are cardinal virtues. Where she differs is that she’s willing to acknowledge that these virtues don’t guarantee a happy life. At best, they help create islands of delight in the murky stream of time. Binchy presents us with the wish-fulfilment vision that evil cannot win, that we can arrive at and inhabit those islands. It’s pleasant to spend some time in her world. ***