This Year It Will Be Different: And Other Stories by Maeve Binchy

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Maeve Binchy
• Title: This Year It Will Be Different: And Other Stories
• Publisher: ‎ Delacorte Press
• Publication Date: November 1996
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover -‎ 210 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0385315031
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0385315036
• Item Weight: ‎ .65 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good (minor shelf wear and discoloration on back of dust jacket cover.) Good condition is defined as a copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages and cover are intact and the cover is in good condition.

Synopsis:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning new work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in fifteen stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings.

In "A Typical Irish Christmas," a grieving New York widower heads for a holiday in Ireland and finds an unexpected destination not just for himself, but for a father and daughter at odds.  The title story "This Year It Will Be Different" also delves into the emotions of a person at mid-life–a woman with a complacent husband and grown children who are entering a season that can forever alter her life, and theirs.  In "Pulling Together," a teacher not yet out of her twenties sees her affair with a married man at a turning point as Christmas Eve approaches–and she may be off on a new direction with some unusual friends.  And in the delightful tale "The Hard Core," the four most recalcitrant residents of a nursing home are left alone at Christmas with the owner's daughter in charge: the result is sure to be disaster–or the kind of life-affirming renewal that only the spirit of the season can bring.

The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives–step-families grappling with ex's, long-married couples faced with in-law problems, a wandering husband choosing between "the other woman" and his wife, a child caught in grown-up tugs-of-war–during the one holiday when feelings cannot be easily hidden. The time of year may be magical, imbued with meaning. But the situations are universal. And Maeve Binchy makes us care about them all. As the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, "Maeve Binchy's people come to life fully. They make you laugh and cry and disturb your sleep." They do precisely that in this extraordinary collection, on the night before Christmas when we are snug in our beds, or anywhere, any time of the year.

About the Author:

Born in a small town in Dublin County, Ireland in 1940, Maeve Binchy Snell earned a B.A, degree from University College, Dublin. She worked as a history and Latin teacher in Dublin, then as a news reporter at The Irish Times.

In the early 1980s, she published her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, using her maiden name Maeve Binchy as her pen name. She was the author of sixteen novels, many of which were international bestsellers, as well as radio dramas and television screenplays.

One of her most successful novels, A Circle of Friends, was adapted into a movie of the same title, starring Minnie Glover and Chris O'Donnell. Tara Road, another bestseller, also became a film, starring Andie McDowell and Olivia Williams.

Among the many honors she received, Binchy was awarded both the British Book and Irish Book Lifetime Achievement awards.

She died in 2012, and her last book, A Week in Winter, was published later that year.