海角大神

By the time of her death in 2012 at age 72, Irish author Maeve Binchy had gained international popularity as a writer of novels with special appeal to women. What鈥檚 less known, particularly among her American readers, is that Binchy first honed her craft as a columnist for The Irish Times.

Maeve鈥檚 Times collects some of her best work from the newspaper where she worked from the 1960s through the 1980s. There are also some essays from later years, when Binchy had left full-time journalism, yet continued to contribute an occasional essay to The Times. The book鈥檚 key audience promises to be diehard Binchy fans who want to revisit a voice they grew to love in such novels as 鈥淢inding Frankie,鈥� 鈥淗eart and Soul,鈥� 鈥淐ircle of Friends鈥� and 鈥淭ara Road,鈥� which was an Oprah鈥檚 Book Club selection. Other readers might be less impressed with this essay collection, which seems to simply assume an audience for the book rather than attempting to build one.

The title, 鈥淢aeve鈥檚 Times,鈥� has a double meaning, referring not only to the paper where Binchy learned to write, but the era when she rose to prominence. At its best, Binchy鈥檚 wry, self-effacing style reminds one of a Celtic Nora Ephron. Like Ephron, Binchy entered professional life in that 鈥淢ad Men鈥� period when women were generally dismissed as afterthoughts around the office. Many of her columns used puckish humor to confront the challenges women had 鈥� and continue to have 鈥� in reconciling cultural ideals of femininity with practical realities. In a 1969 essay, 鈥淭hinking About Underwear Down Under,鈥� she ponders the bargain between sex appeal and durability for intimate apparel. 鈥淎s it stands,鈥� she laments, 鈥渙ne can often be in the lovely position of having to choose between something that looks like a stocking and lasts three days, or something that will last but looks like a surgical bandage.鈥� In her 1973 account of the wedding of Mark Phillips and Princess Anne, also reprinted here, Binchy broke tradition by writing of the royals not as icons, but comically flawed human beings. 鈥淭he Queen looked thin and unhappy in a harsh blue outfit,鈥� Binchy reports. 鈥淧rincess Margaret read her programme of the wedding service as if it were the latest Agatha Christie that she had promised to finish before lunchtime.鈥�

Some of the columns are more serious. One commentary, 鈥淎nna鈥檚 Abortion,鈥� deals with a young woman making a profound, life-altering choice. In these columns, as in her novels, Binchy often throws a spotlight on strong, imperfect women confronting complicated challenges.

These essays, like Binchy鈥檚 fiction, also embrace a familiar, conversational tone. 鈥淢aeve followed the advice she often gave to aspiring writers 鈥� to write as you speak,鈥� her husband and fellow author, Gorden Snell, tells readers in a preface to the collection. 鈥淗er view of the world and the people in it was the same in her writing as it was in her life: she was compassionate and perceptive, she treated everyone with the same considerate interest, and her humour was uproarious but never sneering or cruel.鈥�

Binchy addressed her Irish fans as neighbors, an intimacy that can leave American readers feeling as if they鈥檙e eavesdropping on an inside joke. These essays teem with cultural references largely unfamiliar to those of us on the other side of the Atlantic. In 鈥淲omen Are Fools 鈥� Mary,鈥� an essay about a young woman鈥檚 troubled romantic life, Binchy mentions Mary 鈥渄oing the Hdip,鈥� which a quick visit to Google interprets as preparing for an advanced degree. 鈥淏ut Does Anybody Care?,鈥� an essay on British trivia, opens with this cryptic sentence: 鈥淧erhaps it matters to you that Hull is 226 miles from Brighton and that there are 40 poles (or perches) to the rood.鈥�

A handful of these obscurities might sound charming 鈥� like watching an episode of 鈥淢asterpiece Theatre鈥� 鈥� but they surface so often in 鈥淢aeve鈥檚 Times鈥� that the book can become an exhaustive exercise in translation. Footnotes would have helped greatly, and their absence makes the reader feel as if he鈥檚 watching a foreign language film that lacks subtitles.

To read 鈥淢aeve鈥檚 Times鈥� is to be reminded that while some journalism is timeless, most of it dates pretty quickly. Binchy鈥檚 irreverent observations of Neil Kinnock, for example, will resonate only for those of us who can remember him as a candidate for British prime minister in the 1990s.

Within 鈥淢aeve鈥檚 Times鈥� is a smaller, more engaging book trying to get out. Many of the these essays have yellowed irreparably with the decades, but there鈥檚 just enough here to remind us what Binchy brought to the world, perhaps more abidingly, in her fiction.

Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana, is the author of 鈥淎 Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.鈥澛犅�