Echoes

by Maeve Binchy

Overview

An emotional story of love, betrayal, friendship, and family from #1 New York Times bestselling author Maeve Binchy.

David Power and Clare O'Brien both grew up dreaming of escape from the battered seaside town of Castlebay, Ireland, but they might as well have had the ocean between them. David is the cherished son of a prosperous doctor, while Clare lives with her large family behind their faltering store, longing for a moment of quiet to study. When they both go to university in Dublin—he as a matter of course, she on a hard-won scholarship—their worlds collide. They find freedom in each other—until the families, lovers, and secrets they left in Castlebay come back to haunt them...

“Laughter and tears, it’s what Binchy does best.”—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“The Castlebay Maeve Binchy creates is a marvelous place.”—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451225108
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/04/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	188,817
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and educated at the Holy Child convent in Killiney and at University College, Dublin. After a spell as a teacher she joined The Irish Times. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982, and she went on to write more than twenty books, all of them bestsellers. Several have been adapted for film and television, most notably Circle of Friends and Tara Road, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. She was married to writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell for thirty-five years. She passed away in 2012 at the age of seventy-two.

Hometown:

Dublin, Ireland, and London, England

Date of Birth:

May 28, 1940

Place of Birth:

Dalkey, a small village outside Dublin, Ireland

Education:

Holy Child Convent in Killiney; B.A. in history, University College, Dublin, 1960

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Maeve Binchy

“A remarkably gifted writer...a wonderful student of human nature.”—The New York Times Book Review 

“Reading one of Maeve Binchy’s novels is like coming home.”—The Washington Post

“Binchy is a grand storyteller in the finest Irish tradition…she writes from the heart.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer 

“Binchy’s genius is transforming storytelling into art.”—San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

“Binchy’s tales combine warmth and spunk in a quintessentially Celtic way...In the field of women’s popular fiction, the Dublin storyteller sticks out like a faultless solitaire on a Woolworth’s jewelry counter.”—Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

The bracing sea air brings little pleasure to the year-round residents of Castlebay, a village on the coast of Ireland, where class lines are strictly observed and morals publicly monitored. The youngest daughter of a shopkeeper whose meagre living depends on summer trade, Clare O'Brien is determined to move beyond her present circumstances. Hard work and the guidance of an irreverent, caring schoolteacher bring the resolute scholar to a college in Dublin. There, her steps falter when she enters into an ardent affair with David Power, the son of Castlebay's only doctor and another willing exile. Although David returns her love, their devotion is sorely tested when they are forced to marry and return home. As a wealthy, new-fledged doctor, David easily resumes his privileged position, but Clare is trapped between her mother-in-law's cold fury and the town's unease. Sharply drawn, memorable characters and a convincing picture of a small Irish community bring freshness and zest to a familiar tale. Binchy also wrote Light a Penny Candle.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This romantic melodrama, set in an Irish seaside town in the Fifties and early Sixties, is as wholesome and engaging as the author's first novel, Light a Penny Candle (LJ 2/15/83). Memorable characters include a poor shopkeeper's daughter who wins a university scholarship, only to miss final exams by a cruel twist of fate; a medical student who shocks his family by marrying "beneath him''; a lonely schoolteacher who guards two scandalous secrets about her local celebrity brother; and a kindly, ubiquitous priest who knows all, tells nothing, and holds everyone together. It's a little slow to get into, but by the halfway mark the reader is fully involved in all the subplots and is turning pages nonstop. Recommended for most public libraries and for YA collections. Literary Guild alternate. Joyce Smothers, Ocean Cty. Lib., Toms River, N.J.

Library Journal

Echoes, set in Ireland, is a lovely, ''soft'' book. Maeve Binchy, has written a languid tale set 30 years ago about the people who live in the claustrophobic seaside resort of Castlebay....The Castlebay Maeve Binchy creates is a marvelous place to visit - it's the living there that's hard.

New York Times Book Review