{"id":426,"date":"2009-03-23T21:00:36","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T01:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/23\/review-of-heart-and-soul-by-maeve-binchy\/"},"modified":"2010-03-17T00:29:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T04:29:04","slug":"review-of-heart-and-soul-by-maeve-binchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=426","title":{"rendered":"Review of Heart and Soul, by Maeve Binchy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image425\" height=\"240\" alt=\"heart_and_soul.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/heart_and_soul.jpg\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Heart and Soul<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Maeve Binchy<\/p>\n<p>Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009.\u00a0 418 pages.<\/p>\n<p>Starred review.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Standouts2010.html\">Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010<\/a>: #4 Fiction<\/p>\n<p>Maeve Binchy&#8217;s books are warm, friendly, and cozy.\u00a0 She specializes in telling stories about a community of people.\u00a0 In <em>Heart and Soul<\/em>, the community is a new heart clinic in Dublin.\u00a0 We look through windows into the lives of the people who come to work at the clinic, the patients, and others touched by them.<\/p>\n<p>To add to the fun, the author brings back old friends who played a part in her earlier books.\u00a0 You definitely don&#8217;t need to have read the earlier books to appreciate <em>Heart and Soul, <\/em>but it does make you feel that you are catching up with old friends.\u00a0 I found myself wishing that I had not missed her last book, <em>Whitethorn Woods.\u00a0 <\/em>I will definitely have to rectify that.<\/p>\n<p>In Maeve Binchy&#8217;s earlier books, there seemed to be a pattern that the more ideal the marriage seemed, the more sure you could be that it was doomed.\u00a0 These more recent books are gentler.\u00a0 People still have problems, but personally I&#8217;m glad that there are less dirty rotten cheating husbands than in some of her earlier books.\u00a0 Her characters cope with their problems with courage, compassion and resilience, and it&#8217;s delightful to spend time in the company of these people.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/030726579X\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009.\u00a0 418 pages. Starred review. Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #4 Fiction Maeve Binchy&#8217;s books are warm, friendly, and cozy.\u00a0 She specializes in telling stories about a community of people.\u00a0 In Heart and Soul, the community is a new heart clinic in Dublin.\u00a0 We look through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,30,24,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-review","category-general","category-romance","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}