Maeve Binchy The Return Journey (1998)

 

    Maeve Binchy The Return Journey (1998) Binchy writes “women’s’ fiction”, the kind of story in which the plot revolves around some relationship, often complicated by people’s attempts to resolve conflicting emotions. These stories are often very short, and require great skill in sketching a whole life so that the current dilemma makes enough sense to engage the reader. Binchy’s eye is a little sharper than Rosamund Pilcher’s, and so her themes are somewhat darker, but on the whole her formulas are the same: women are the protagonists, the characters are often engaged in glamorous professions, and they never, never suffer a tragic fate (although the sometimes painful compromises they must make come close), and so on.
     All the stories in this book use the motif of a journey, which is an apt metaphor for change, and changes (making them, accepting them, discovering them) form the plots. Binchy’s style is plain and unassuming; I can’t remember anything about it except its pleasant blandness. Her characterisation depends heavily on backstory (she has superb skill at compressing a life into a couple of paragraphs), and of course she describes clothes carefully: I guess for women clothes express character, while for men they announce a role. Pleasant entertainment, but not memorable. ** (2004)