Evening Class is divided into nine sections. The first eight, "Aidan," "Signora," "Bill," "Kathy," "Lou," "Connie," "Laddy," and "Fiona" each focus on the background of one character and what leads the person to join the "Viaggio" to Italy, which is the tide of the novel's final secdon. Binchy breaks each section into a series of short scenes, letting her third-person omniscient narrator tell the story in a string of dissolves, much the way a motion picture does. Each segment also introduces other characters who become intertwined with the focal characters, so that the story incrementally builds a community of people who all have some relationship to the evening class and to each other.

For example, in the first section, the reader learns that Grania Dunne covers the nights she spends with Tony O'Brien by telling her parents that she is staying with Fiona. It is not until section...