Evening Class Book

Maeve Binchy can always be counted on to spin an involving tale about ordinary people that brings out the extraordinary in everyone. In Evening Class, Binchy zooms in on the working-class of Dublin. Schoolteacher Aidan Dunne organises an evening class in Italian with the help of Nora O'Donoghue, an Irishwoman returning home after 26 years in Sicily. When the somewhat squashed-by-life denizens of the surrounding neighbourhood take the unexpected step of enrolling in the class, they find their lives transformed. Binchy tells her story from the viewpoints of eight different characters and rewards both them and us with happy endings after the requisite rocky road. Listening to a novel by Maeve Binchy is like catching up with old friends--you know everything will turn out fine in the end, but you're still interested in how things get that way. Kate Binchy's light and lilting voice shifts effortlessly to capture the essence of both major and minor characters. Her Italian pronunciation is entirely credible and her reading brings an extra dimension to this charming story. --Sarah CrawfordRead More