‘A Week in Winter’ uses storytelling device in believable way

Maeve Binchy was one of the best known novelists of the last 40 or 50 years (she wrote 20) and this, her latest novel, was chosen as an Oprah’s Book Club selection. One can see why.

“A week in winter” is what a bevy of guests get at Stone House, an old mansion “set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic,” which Chickie (who had troubles of her own and makes up a story that her husband was killed in an auto accident) has elegantly restored with some help from her family and friends. All (except one) are affected by her understanding, warm heart, by the blazing fires she makes and the good food she creates.

The novelist does her work well, by introducing each person or couple and the situations that led them to Stone House and how that “week” changed them. These are three-dimensional stories, and the reader gets to know each person or couple.

John is a movie star who arrives incognito convinced (by Chickie’s discretion) that no one will recognize him. There’s also Winnie, whose fiance insists she spend that week with his mother, whom she hates (the two of them get stuck in a cave and sing as the water rises around them); a married pair of doctors escaping from a tragedy they witnessed who save a teenager who, distraught, had been intent on suicide;  a young Swedish musician whose father’s only interest is his business, which he convinces his son he must take over;  the Walls, who, as inveterate prize winners, have won this week as a second prize, disappointing them they didn’t win first – which was the Ritz in Paris; Miss Howe, a retired headmistress who is “her own worst enemy” and the others despise; and finally, a very unhappy librarian.

The place and the people both at Stone House and in surrounding towns and countryside profoundly affect those guests, many of whom make changes in their lives. This device of storytelling has, of course, been used before – but this one shows a master novelist at work, showing us how believable change comes about.

Maeve Binchy died last July, “shortly after she finished this book.”

Book info:
A Week in Winter
By Maeve Binchy
Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95

Posted by Rae Eastman on March 21, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry