Echoes Book

In Echoes Binchy proves that she truly is a master storyteller but blistering sentimentality and her penchant for verbosity turn some sections of the novel into a test of stamina.

The story revolves around Clare O'Brien and David Power, the offspring of two vastly different families in the seaside town of Castlebay in the 1950s. The O'Briens run the local shop, they're working class and Clare is only able to further her education by being gifted and winning scholarships. The Powers are 'to the manor born', David is off at boarding school for the early parts of the novel but eventually follows in his father's footsteps by studying medicine. You can already guess where this is going, yes, this is Maeve Binchy's Romeo and Juliet.

Of course the plot involving Clare and David is actually only one storyline in this vast 737-page novel which spans the entirety of the 50s and the early 60s in Castlebay. Binchy is at her absolute best when she is juggling several plots. Where many authors struggle to tie everything together, Binchy has an almost Dickensian talent of making everything connect and tie-up naturally. However, where in other novels Binchy is fully able to fill her usual 700+ page count with ease, in Echoes it seems that for every page of plot there was an accompanying page of filler.

It also does not help that I found this novel to be uncharacteristically sentimental for Binchy. She always writes stories of love and marriage but she usually balances that out with some genuinely moving and, sometimes, shocking content. Who can forget the abortion in Light A Penny Candle for example? Binchy teases us in the prologue of Echoes by telling us about the body of a dead man floating in the sea off the cliffs of Castlebay, but she does not return to this ghastly scene until the very end of the novel - 700 pages later. Meanwhile you've got to deal with the just-about-bareable Clare and the posh daddy's boy David.

I feel that I've talked about the length of this novel quite a lot in this review but honestly that is my biggest criticism. There is absolutely no need for this book to be as long as it is. Binchy writes big books, but this isn't a big story. I often found myself getting bored and realising that I had 400 or more pages left. It is unfortunate.

Echoes is a vast and well-written novel. There are many characters in here that would be considered 'classic Binchy' and it is often very funny. However, tweeness and boredom set in after the first couple hundred pages and never really leave. Overall, it's a fine novel that displays Binchy's wit but the editor should hang their head in shame.