Maeve Binchy Audiobooks

Small-town Ireland observed with warmth and a surprise ending, in A Few of the Girls

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.0/5 average

3 listener ratings

Who is Maeve Binchy?

Maeve Binchy (1939 to 2012) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist and speaker, and for decades one of Ireland’s best-loved writers. Her fiction offered warm, often humorous portraits of small-town Irish life with a fondness for the surprise ending, and it travelled formidably: translations into 37 languages, more than 40 million copies sold, a place on the New York Times bestseller list and a berth in Oprah’s Book Club.

When she died in 2012, aged 73, the loss was mourned as that of one of Ireland’s most recognisable writers. Her standing with readers was a matter of record as well as affection: in a 2000 World Book Day poll she finished third, ahead of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Stephen King. Among fellow writers she was known for her generosity and a much-remarked absence of malice.

Maeve Binchy in audiobooks

Binchy in audio is comfort listening of the highest order – and that is praise, not faint praise. Her gifts were warmth and company: small-town Irish life observed with sympathy and humour, characters worth caring about, and endings that keep a surprise in reserve. Those are precisely the qualities that flourish when a story is read aloud.

A Few of the Girls, the Binchy title in our catalogue, draws on her strength in the shorter form – she was a short story writer as well as a novelist – and stories in this register make ideal episodic listening: one before bed, one on the school run, nothing lost if life interrupts. For UK listeners after warmth without whimsy, Binchy remains the benchmark.