A Few of the Girls: Stories

When an author’s name is ten times as big as the title of the book, it may be a clear indication that she has a tremendous following. After all, she has written twenty best sellers. She speaks the language of girl talk whether catty, malicious or well meaning. These are stories of friend groups, lost love and reclaimed connections. There are thirty-six stories in this collection. The first, Falling Apart is a friend group made up of women who settled into a seeming comfortable life and their stellar distant friend. The successful friend returns from time to time and things are not the same as when she is absent. It is a story about artifice and impressing others and ultimately what a failure it is to try. And don’t we always know what is best for our friends?

Many of Binchy’s women do and don’t even seem to realize how condescending that attitude is. Ultimately, although set in Ireland, these are people we know and are comfortable around. That is a difficult task for a writer to achieve, but as her widower says in the foreword, her writing is “effortless.”