Circle of Friends

I want my book to draw you into the tale that's unfolding, and to have you to get to know my characters as well as I do. - Maeve Binchy

There is no doubt that the strength of the novel Circle of Friends is the power of the narrative and the author's gift in bringing alive her characters.

The novel begins in the kitchen of the Hogan family - "The kitchen was full of the smell of baking" - and grows out to the small town of Knockglen. The central character is Benny Hogan who grows up in Knockglen as an only child but forges a great friendship with the orphaned Eve Malone. Eve and Benny are now about to take up University courses in Dublin. There the circle of friends broadens to include the handsome Jack Foley, the beautiful if manipulative Nan Mahon and the eccentric, witty Aidan Lynch.

A wide range of themes emerge from this gripping narrative including the meaning of friendship and love, loyalty and betrayal, class issues, death, alcoholism, small town life, families, growing up and identity. The novel is a very accessible read with many relevant young adult concerns. It also opens out the social world of the late 1940s and 1950s in Ireland and explores class and religious values. The Protestant upper class gentry are evoked through the Westward family. The professional middle class are represented, as are the working class and the less privileged.

Maeve Binchy's stylistic power is in her imaginative creation of people and place. The reader gets to know intimately and empathically "the big handsome Benny with her green eyes and chestnut brown hair tied back with a bow, always a big soft good - quality bow, a bit like Benny herself," the unconventional, wacky Fonsie and Clodagh, the uppity Mrs. Healy, the kind Mother Francis, the visionary butcher Mr. Flood, the "awful sleeveen" Sean Walsh and many more.

The reader is also drawn into places like the comfortable "Lisbeg", Benny's home, Mario's fish and chip shop, Mrs. Healy's hotel and Hogan's Gentleman's Outfitters. Of Hogan's shop the author writes,
the place smelled heavy and musty. There was nothing about it that would encourage you to spend. Nothing that would make a man feel puckish and buy a bright tie or a coloured shirt when he had always worn white.
The tale weaves wonderfully through the minutiae and sadness of ordinary lives but is always uplifted by a spirit of hope and humour.
Benny decided she would be thin on Thursday week …
She wondered should she wear a corset like Mrs. Healy …
There was the one she had seen advertised 'Nu Back corset … - expands as you bend, stoop or twist ... returns to position easily and can not ride up when sitting.
The romantic concluding imagery also conveys the novel's hopeful view of life:
All she (Benny) could see were the flames and the sparks, and the long shadows out over the sand and the edge of the sea with tiny bits of white coming in over the stones and the beach. And the friends, all the friends sitting in the great circle, looking as if they were going to sing forever.

The novel offers many opportunities for language development through creative modelling, predictions, interventions and analysis. Above all, it promotes greater awareness and understanding of both the light and dark side of humanity - motivation, character, human dilemmas and human spirit. Well worth the read.