The signature style of a Binchy novel is a large cast of often eccentric characters.
Because she chooses to tell the stories of her focal characters one at a time in this novel, readers are given detailed glimpses into their backgrounds and personalities.
Binchy sculpts them with fine features.
Even the more minor characters, however, are painted in a trompe l'oeil style that gives them a three-dimensional quality. Neither Nell Dunne nor her daughter Brigid is a focal character; yet Binchy places them in a scene that reveals much about the state of their souls and underscores the apathy of the household: Mrs. Dunne had her paperback folded back on itself, as she so often had. She gave the impression of someone waiting in an airport rather than being in the center of.....
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