Evening Class by Maeve Binchy

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Maeve Binchy
• Title: Evening Class
• Publisher: ‎ Delacorte Press
• Publication Date: March 1997
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover -‎ 420 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0385318073
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0385318075
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.58 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 10 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good

 

Synopsis:

Aidan Dunne, a Dublin Latin teacher, always meant to go back to the Italy he visited as a youth. But as the years passed, he concentrated instead on the usual struggles of daily life, like vying for the job of headmaster at his school, keeping memories of Italy in the back corners of his mind. At forty-eight, emotionally distanced from his wife, baffled by his two grown daughters, Aidan Dunne might have given up entirely if it hadn’t been for the evening class. His class. A class called Introduction to Italian. A class where people from every walk of life come together. A class where long-buried hopes come alive again.

 

The teacher is Signora, a vivacious, eccentric woman with an irrepressible nature and a buried past. Her real name is Nora O’Donoghue, a Dublin native who abandoned Ireland decades before to follow her mysterious lover to Italy. Having defied her parents’ Catholic conventions, she ended up in a village where tradition dictated everything–including how a woman could love or grieve. Now, as she meets Aidan Dunne and the men and women who come together each Tuesday and Thursday night, Signora begins to learn their secrets and their dreams. And slowly she transforms each of their lives.

 

Suddenly Aidan Dunne’s last chance, his evening class has become a place of intrigue and revelation. Here Bill, a reliable bank clerk, uncovers the hidden source of his fiancee Lizzie’s outrageous behavior. Teenage Kathy, slow at day school but bright as a button with Signora, is coming close to realizing a devastating truth about her family. Streetwise Lou, his tuition paid by a crime boss, has his own agenda for the group. And mousy Fiona decides to meddle in a married man’s illicit affair–with repercussions for everyone, including Signora and Aidan Dunne.

 

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.