Maeve Binchy: The Biography

Dudgeon (Neverland) begins his narrative of bestselling author Maeve Binchy with novelistic flair, but, once past the familiar-sounding details of her early life and career, struggles for a conventional plot formula to fit the mature Binchy's life. He labors to attribute Binchy's "authentic" style to her ancestry, in particular an "indigenous Irish culture" built on music and storytelling. Yet Dudgeon also grounds the international success of her emotionally-driven, female-centered novels in modern vogues for psychology, feminism, and women's fiction. Beside the reminiscences of friends and occasional attempts at amateur psychoanalysis based on her fiction, the biography relies on personal stories that will amuse the casual fan but which Binchy's loyal followers may recognize as culled with some embellishment from her Irish Times columns. Her mature, most beloved novels merit barely a mention as Dudgeon muses on Binchy's appeal as an "intuitive" writer channeling "the collective unconscious of her people." While the biography does sensitively capture her "exhilarating, joyful spirit" as well as her vulnerabilities, Dudgeon's Binchy ultimately never seems as fully-realized as one of her own characters%E2%80%94testament, perhaps, to the unique talent that "made people feel happier for reading her." (July)