Popular Fiction: Maeve Binchy moves her trademark warmth, humour and insight to a Greek island
Like many a star before her, Maeve Binchy, with her newly published novel, has come back with style, giving her audience of readers a well-deserved encore. Rumours of swansongs and scaling down have been pushed aside as, in a Frank Sinatra-style return, this much-loved writer of Irish popular fiction returns to her rightful place as "Top of the heap" and "Queen of the best-seller lists". It was always hard to believe that one of Ireland's greatest storytellers would be able to stop.
In this new book, Binchy takes us far from the country parishes, small towns and cosy Dublin suburbs of her previous novels. It's with something of a jolt we discover we are not in Tara Road, Quentins or Knockglen but on a small Greek island.
Fears that Binchy, in deserting her native shore as a setting might also desert the essential ingredients of a Binchy novel - humour, warmth, and insight - are quickly dispelled as we settle ourselves in the idyllic setting of the village of Aghia Anna.
Different also is the introduction on the very first page of the male voice of Andreas, the taverna owner who waits as a few foreigners climb the hill to his restaurant.
All watch in horrified disbelief as a crowded small red and white tour boat explodes and bursts into flames in the beautiful bay below.
Shocked, five strangers with nothing in common but the desire to escape their normal lives begin to talk as Andreas serves them reviving brandy on the terrace of the taverna.
Fiona, the naïve young Irish nurse who has run away with her domineering boyfriend, Shane; Thomas, the recently divorced American, missing his young son; David, the shy Englishman, who has turned his back on his father and refused to join the family business; and Elsa, the beautiful German TV reporter, who has quit her job because of the complications of a romantic relationship with her producer.
Over the next few days, as the village mourns those lost in the disaster, the members of this disparate group find themselves unexpectedly thrown together.
Father and son relationships are explored and the intuitive Andreas, whose son left the island after an argument years ago, decides that life is perhaps too short to let foolish masculine pride separate them.
However it is the mysterious Vonni, who provides the lynchpin for the novel. This middle-aged Irish woman, who has spent most of her life on the island, soon assumes the mantle of wise woman and agony aunt to this new group of friends.
Vonni has her own secrets, her own deep hurts, but in true Binchy big-hearted fashion sets out to solve the problems all around her. Even if a little interference and a lot of local meddling is needed, as she gets the gullible Fiona to discover her own worth, and encourages the anxious David to teach Maria, the local widow, to drive, and the reluctant Thomas and Elsa to take a good look at one another.
With no feisty young heroine trying to find the man of her dreams, Nights of Rain and Stars relies on Binchy's well proven recipe of family, friendships old and new, parental love, compassion and forgiveness, and the wonders of love turning up when you least expect it.
Just as Maeve Binchy introduced her legions of fans abroad to Ireland, her descriptions of Greece and the mouth-watering local delicacies served at the Mesanihta café and the taverna will no doubt ensure that the Greek tourist authorities will have to brace themselves for a massive onslaught of visitors to their shores.
The storytelling, good humour and warmth are as wonderful as ever, as readers welcome back "La Binchy".
Nights of Rain and Stars By Maeve Binchy Orion, 327pp. £17.99
Marita Conlon-McKenna's most recent novel, The Stone House, is published by Bantam Press. She is the current chairperson of Irish PEN