Maeve Binchy. The Lilac Bus (1984)

     Maeve Binchy. The Lilac Bus (1984) Seven people plus a driver ride a bus from Dublin to Randooth every weekend. Eight stories tell us what happens to them one weekend. The interconnections between the stories occur only as one might expect from a group of people who have little in common besides their bus ride and the village itself. The stories are women’s fiction with a bit of an edge. Binchy is almost as ruthless as Munro, but she softens the effect of her clear gaze by adding dollops of sentiment. Still, she has the power to imagine well rounded characters and to delineate the always problematical relationships between people who can hurt each other. **½ (2004)