susiej/reviews

Quentins, by Maeve Binchy, is a restaurant that serves as a meeting place in many Binchy novels. In this book, Binchy uncovers some of the clandestine meetings, heartbreaks, and stories of love and loss that have taken place in Quentins. The main character, Ella Brady, pulled me in, and I found Maeve to be a talented novelist, who know how to entertain and delight. Quentins, is nothing short of a delicious, saucy, plot-twisting great book.

For my recent trip to the lake, I picked up Firefly Summer, hoping to pull in the same penetrating characters, drama, and resolution as I found in Quentins.

The story in Firefly summer is also filled with dramatic characters, and Maeve is a master at giving us all the details of a lifetime in just two sentences. But the story here is much harder to bear.. this has been a tough read, full of hearbreak. My husband, watching some tears fall from my face as I read, asked, “Why do you keep reading it if it’s so depressing.”

“Because,” I said, “Maeve delivers not only the heartbreak, but also the lessons, the healing and the transformation that eventually comes as life continues to play itself out. For me, I must wait a lifetime for my own heartbreaks to be healed. Here, I can see almost instantly that time does bring healing, in surprising ways.”

It’s a lovely, lovely read.

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