Blaire's review
Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy
This is the second of Maeve Binchy's books that I've read, but the first that she published. The first one I read was Circle of Friends, and I liked it better.
Maeve Binchy writes about the lives of pretty ordinary people in one of my least favorite decades - the 1950s. I think she captures the feeling of that time very well. There's not a lot of plot or action - it's really about the intersection of character and time. Her characters are types that I recognize, and she's done a good job of giving them life. She's very unkind to most of her male characters. They probably deserve most of it given the attitudes toward women that were prevalent at the time, but their fates seemed a little extreme to me.
I thought the end was rushed and lacked the subtlety of the rest of the book.
Maeve Binchy writes about the lives of pretty ordinary people in one of my least favorite decades - the 1950s. I think she captures the feeling of that time very well. There's not a lot of plot or action - it's really about the intersection of character and time. Her characters are types that I recognize, and she's done a good job of giving them life. She's very unkind to most of her male characters. They probably deserve most of it given the attitudes toward women that were prevalent at the time, but their fates seemed a little extreme to me.
I thought the end was rushed and lacked the subtlety of the rest of the book.
