Reviews for Echoes

The average rating for Echoes based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-19 00:00:00 Ebgenii Cylimob I read this a long time ago, shortly after it was first published, but as I started re-reading, it all started to slowly begin to feel familiar as aspects began to come back. Echoes by Maeve Binchy is a wonderful character driven piece of historical fiction that takes us back to the Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s. She paints a picture of small Irish town life of the period, evoked vibrantly by her rich descriptions and details, with a host of characters, many that are eminently unlikeable, with the gossip, class rigidity, prejudices, judgementalism, gender limitations faced by girls and women, the central place, strictness and importance of the Irish Roman Catholic Church within the community, capturing the social norms and attitudes, including the lack of understanding and dismissal of issues such as post-natal depression. This is the story of working class Claire O'Brien, a shopkeeper's daughter, bright and ambitious, determined to escape her circumstances, helped by teacher, Angela O'Hara, gaining scholarships that take her to Dublin. Then there is David Power, the doctor's son, a David and Claire who break the expectations that they face, and Gerry Doyle, from a similar background as Claire, obsessed by her. Binchy tells the emotive story of lives that are intertwined through the years, the challenges, of love, class, hardships, infidelities, betrayal and tragedy, where the echoes of the past can be hard to shake off. This is a compelling and immersive Irish novel, of a bygone era, of its time and place, aspects of which makes me grateful that the world has moved on, yet retains echoes of a simpler, more straightforward time compared to the complexities and pressures of our contemporary world. This turned out to be an enjoyable re-read! Many thanks to Random House Cornerstone for a copy of the book.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-09 00:00:00 KEv Collins 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.