Circle of Friends: A Novel

"Circle of Friends" is to me what "The Baronetage" is to Sir Walter Elliot in "Persuasion". :) "...there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were aroused into admiration and respect, ... there any unwelcome sensations ... changed into pity and contempt." This book is about friendship, love, betrayal, growing up, learning to fight for what is important & learning to let go. The story takes us to 1957 when Benny (Mary Bernadette) Hogan & Eve Malone are to leave (or are they?) the safe, but limited boundaries of their small Irish hometown of Knockglen -where everyone knows everyone- for the "big, dangerous" city of Dublin. Benny, an awkward (because she is big and tall), but infinitely kind and funny girl is an only daughter to well-meaning, but elderly parents, who don't seem to realise that she is growing up into a woman. Although they are willing to pay for a university education (strictly Catholic, of course) for Benny, their own plan includes her returning to Knockglen afterwards & marrying her father's assistant (they have a struggling gentlemen's outfit shop), the unappealing, slimy & calculating Sean Walsh. Eve is an orphan, brought up by the nuns of the Knockglen Catholic Convent (lead by the wonderful, practical Mother Francis), after her late mother's upper-class (Anglo-Irish) family rejects her because she married a low-class, Catholic handyman. She has no funds for university, unless she learns to overcome her pride & ask the Westwards to pay her tuition fee. In Dublin they meet handsome, popular Jack Foley, cinnamon roll of the University & beautiful, cool Nan Mahon, who is playing a dangerous & ruthless game to get away from her aggressive, drunken father's house both geographically and socially & to land a rich and upper class husband. The scene is also enriched by a set of very well drawn supporting characters both from the big city & the small town and you cannot help to laugh, cheer, curse or cry as the story unfolds.

This book encapsulates all the reasons people read Maeve Binchy. It is a tale set in 1950's Ireland about a group of young people going to college in Dublin and about all their extended families and friends. It deals with life and relationships in a true Binchy fashion and lacks the rushed endings and wild character changes (for the most part) that her other novels have. It is also "Early Binchy," so no Quentins or St. Jarleth's crescent or any of the other things that show up in her later novels. It does have other Binchy tropes such as the femme fatale (Nan), the handsome but undependable rakes (Jack and Simon), and the noble and good females that are betrayed by said rakes and femme fatales (Benny, Kit Hegarty, etc). However the novel is a good, plot-light character study that shows a bit of how life was like in the 50's in Ireland when the country was starting to change into modern times and out of strict Catholic hierarchy. Binchy is good at weaving characters together in a cozy, enjoyable way that make her novels good reading though not heavy stuff. I won't give it a full five stars as the novel is somewhat draggy and repetitive at times but is still a good read and worth checking out.

Meave Binchy brings a disparate cast of characters together and gives them such distictive and interesting personalities I feel as if Ive known them and cared for them all my life! A pleasure read for sure!

I've been wanting to read this book for some time and finally finished it this past week. I have previously seen the movie which I also enjoyed very much. I would say the central theme for both the book and movie were similar, but there were also many significant differences, so I was glad that I read it. It was an easy read and very well-written. The story mainly follows a year or so in the life of Benny Hogan (the daughter of a merchant in a small village in Southern Ireland) and a few of her friends (Eve & Nan) in the late 1950's as they start University and enter into their first relationships with boys. It's sweet, funny and also heartbreaking. All in all, a good story and definitely worth reading.

An admission comes first: I am a fan of Maeve Binchy's books and the small town Irish families that people her books. This is a great example of what Binchy does best - she introduces the reader to a varied, interesting cast of characters, then she weaves their lives together in both expected and unexpected ways. "Circle of Friends" chronicles the evolving relationships of Benny, a young woman from a small town near Dublin entering university. At the beginning of the book, the over-protected Benny has one good friend, a quiet orphan raised in the local convent. The two set out on widely separated paths, but their lives are changed by an accident and the group of college students they meet through it. Benny matures from a shy, only child to a young adult, confident in her choices and future . Two of the things I loved about this book was how clearly Binchy delineates each character and how deftly she intertwines their lives in the storyline. I think I could almost go to the town and greet them without a preliminary introduction.

Great story

It's like coming home whenever I read any Maeve Binchy book. This one in particular. It was the first book of hers I ever read and my paperback is missing the front and back covers and pages have come unglued from all the times I've read it.

Maeve Binchy is one of my all time favourite authors, and a huge inspiration to me, as she writes in the genre that I am attempting myself, emotional women’s fiction. Not only writes in it, is the doyenne of the genre. I have been a huge fan since I first borrowed a copy of Light A Penny Candle from my mother’s book shelf in my late teens. From that very first reading, I fell in love with her writing. Her gimlet eye for human nature. Her empathetic portrayal of emotion and the intimate frailties of the lives of real people. Her vivid portrayals of daily life in rural Ireland from the 1950s until modern times, and particularly the lives of Catholic women. Her books are a masterclass in how to write women’s fiction, and I am a true disciple, as my Maeve Binchy shelf will attest. I once saw someone dismiss her writing as ‘chicklit.’ Leaving aside the hot debate about the use of this intentionally derogatory term for books that are enjoyed by millions of women – and men – the world over, to label her work as chicklit is to fundamentally misunderstand it. IMG_3145 Of all of her wonderful books, Circle of Friends has always been my favourite. It had a big impact on me when I first read it, and that impact has not lessened over the dozens of re-readings I have made of this book over the years, including the latest. The story still moves me emotionally, draws me in to its world and holds me in its grasp until the very last page, even though I know what is coming and how it ends. The ability to do this, to include layers of complexity and feeling so that the reader is held in thrall every time is a rare and beautiful skill that she possessed in boatloads and is the reason that her books have been bestsellers for decades, and are still popular many years after her death. Even now, new stage adaptations of her books are being written to delight audiences who can’t get enough of her intimate portrayals of women. This book tells the story of the friendship of Benny Hogan and Eve Malone as they grow up as children in rural Ireland in the 1950s and eventually leave their small town to go to university in Dublin, and how the contrast between the small, safe childhoods they have known and navigating the expanded world of college, new friends and the city, impacts them individually and as friends. Ireland, a strict Catholic country in the 1950s, held specific difficulties for women, but also the same challenges that we have faced the world over for centuries and, how the two girls navigate these challenges and support each other at the same time is at the core of the book and what will speak to women reading this book everywhere. Many of the issues that Maeve addresses are universal and will inevitably lead to the reader being able to identify with at least one of the characters in the book or one of the situations they have to face. Female friendship is an enduring topic in women’s literature, and one that is at the centre of many of Maeve’s books, and this one in particular. Benny Hogan is one of my favourite ever characters in a novel, and one I always have, and still do, identify with strongly. The author does such an amazing job of portraying her insecurity and vulnerability through childhood and into her teenage years that I defy anyone not to be firmly on her side from the beginning of this book, not to see some aspect of themselves and any fear they have ever had about their place in the world reflected back at them. This then makes Benny the perfect character to draw us in to this story of a young, gauche girl trying to navigate the new and intimidating world of university, far away from home and all the security she has known. These are emotions that most of us can relate to in one way or another and, as such, it is impossible not to celebrate her successes in this new world and suffer her heartbreak at the same time she does. This book takes me back to my teenage years, the overwhelming emotions that you feel falling in love for the first time, how one person can come to mean everything to you and that relationship, the tornado of feelings that are unleashed and seem uncontrollable, how the end of the relationship feels like the end of the world; I remember it all and relive it again through the pages of this book. Maeve’s writing is so tender and knowing, she really understands what makes people tick and is able to portray this in a way that makes us understand it too, but effortlessly, so you can’t even see how she is doing it. The lives of these women, their relationships and the settings of the stories come alive on the page, it is like watching a technicolour movie, and you can’t even see the joins. She writes the way I want to write, and I have spent a lot of time looking at how she does it, in the vain hope I can emulate her to some small degree. There was a discussion in my writing circle only yesterday about describing settings in books, how to do it vividly but discretely. Anyone wanting to see how it is done could do a lot worse than reading this book. Maeve’s work led me on to reading a lot of other Irish writers who quickly became huge favourites of mine, Marian Keyes and Cathy Kelly to name but two, and on to people such as Veronica Henry and Erica James, who also write this genre similarly beautifully and who are all heroes of mine. But Maeve Binchy is the reason I feel in love with this genre in the beginning and she will always hold a special place in my heart. I miss her still

Absolutely Brilliant book,I could not put it down,this author in my opinion is the best female author of her time

This book was purchased as a gift for this coming Christmas.

It is not the Action, or any sexual description that makes this book (or other of Maeve Binchy) so great, it is just the plain truth in them. You can understand the people, their fears, their ideas. You turn page by page and are surprised by small things and it just wraps you up. This is my second book by Maeve Binchy and even though I normally tend to Fantasy and Science Fiction books, Maeve Binchi is starting to be a personal favorite of mine for a lovely reading.

Unforgettable stories