More tasty chips from Binchy: Chestnut Street (2014)

Maeve Binchy. Chestnut Street (2014) A posthumous collection, and like all Maeve Binchy works, a potato chip book. Binchy, like Munro and others, shows how people’s character flaws, quirks, ill-considered decisions, and willingness to believe anyone who offers what they wish for, in short, the common human weaknesses, cause the troubles that hurt them. She has the gift of sketching a whole life in a few paragraphs. Unlike Munro and others, she tends to provide happy endings, many enabled by some lucky coincidence, or some necessary but somewhat improbable insight. This comforts the reader, but doesn’t fully satisfy. So one (me, that is) reads the next story, and the next, and the next. The stories are tasty, flavoured with ironies and poetic justice, confirming popular notions about psychology, with enough realism to soothe the critical faculties.

Binchy’s stories take place in the borderland between fantasy and realism. She knows the contours of her talent, and has adapted her vision to her market. I enjoyed reading these stories, and was happy to suspend disbelief. ***