6/24/2005: Reads: Quentins
Quentins by Maeve Binchy
I love Maeve Binchy. Her books are light, compelling reading but far from being fluff, they deal with those everyday realities of life that may not seem important at the time but in fact turn out to shape the people they happen to.
Binchy's books usually revolve around ordinary people in Dublin, Ireland and Quentins is no different. If you've read any of her recent books, you're familiar with the upscale restaurant and may think this is a rehash of those other books. But it isn't - this time Quentins is to be the focus of a locally-made documentary that will show Dublin's evolution from small town mentality to sophisticated world city by mirroring the same in the restaurant, its staff, and its customers. In doing so, and unfolding her characters' stories, Binchy shows some of the casualties of that sophistication - a young woman in love with a married man, the devastating effects on ordinary people who are victims of financial fraud, and a successful expatriate's coming to terms with his hatred and resentment of his father - the kinds of things that wouldn't have been as likely to happen in the stricter parochial Dublin of the past.
We meet again a few characters from Binchy's other books including Tom and Cathy of Scarlet Feather, the precocious twins Maud and Simon, Nora O'Donoghue (who followed her true love to Italy, watching him raise his family from afar), and of course Brenda & Patrick Brennan of Quentins. We also experience a few births, deaths, and weddings - those major milestones that mark the passage of time for fictional people just as they do in our own lives.
Maeve Binchy's great talent is in writing about ordinary people who, through easy but meticulous character development, become extraordinary people as we come to know them better. She rounds out every one of her characters with good and bad traits, like real people have, and she always injects just the right amount of humor and sadness at just the right time. She's been successful writing short stories and full length novels, and in Quentins we get a bit of both: within the context of researching the documentary, we're treated to short narratives about a certain lunch or dinner at the restaurant that was the setting for life-changing events for the people involved.
Quentins is like every Binchy book in that it's just delightful in every way. It's a perfect "escape" novel that will introduce you to characters you'll remember long after reading about them, and it also reminds us that no matter how great or horrible some event may be, in time it will become just another memory of the past. Her greatest gift may be in the ways she shows us how different people react to bad things that happen in life, and how some of those reactions help to heal and move on, while others lead to bitterness or guilt, or worse.
