Tenant of Wildfell Hall Part II

Gilbert reads the diaries, and finds that Helen was married to Arthur Huntingdon, a handsome young man who owns Grassdale Manor. She was young and romantic and in love.. and they were happy at first. But she began to find him selfish and controlling. He was jealous of their son when he was born and Helen grew to dislike his friends, who were nearly all heavy drinkers and gamblers and she found Arthur's drinking very hard to take. She at first thought she could reform him but things got worse. She realised that Arthur was having an affair with his friend's wife Lady Lowborough, and was upset. Another of his friends tried to seduce her but she snubbed him. She grew increasingly unhappy as Arthur began to teach little Arthur to drink and swear and she found that he was having an affair with a young woman who had been engaged as the child's governess.

Tenant of Wildfell Hall

This is Anne's second and last novel. It is set in Yorkshire, and it starts with a letter from GIlbert Markham, a gentleman farmer, to his brother in law. He is writing to tell his friend about how he, Gilbert, came to marry his wife. He has a prosperous farm, though he sometimes longs for a more exciting life. A few years earlier, a new neighbour came to live at Wildfell Hall, a big house nearby which had not been used for some years. Gilbert is intrigued by the new tenant, an attractive woman who has a son, Arthur. The neighbours find her strange as she does not want to socialise much. She tells them that she has to earn a living and she is a painter so she does not have time for parties. She has few servants and seems rather cold and unfriendly. Mrs Markham, Gilbert's mother does not take to her, she thinks that Mrs Graham is too fussy about her son. She disapproves of drinking, and gives the little boy alcohol mixed with emetic, as a medicine so he dislikes the taste of it. Gilbert is a rather clumsy young man, who flirts with one of the local girls but finds himself being drawn to Helen Graham. But he is not much good at paying court. He begins to be suspicious of Helen, that she has a man visiting her privately. He meets Frederick Lawrence, one of the neighbours on the road to Wildfell Hall and over reacts wildly, attacking the man. Helen is upset and gives him her diaries to read so she can explain that there is nothing wrong in her relationship with Lawrence.

The Professor II

William's employer is kind to him and he gets friendly with Mademoisell Reuter who runs a girls' school. He is attracted by her but then realises that she is not sincere. He overhears her and M Pelet talking about their oncoming marriage and cools on her. He is suspicious of women, especially Catholic ones. Mlle Reuter continues to try to draw him in, and asks him to teach one of her junior teachers, Frances Henri, who is half Swiss and half English, and she wants to learn better English. William likes her, she is not a Belgian Catholic, and he begins to fall in love with her. But Mlle Reuter is jealous of their friendship, and dismisses Frances, refusing to let William know her new address. He is angry and realises that Mlle Reuter has become emotionally drawn to him, in spite of M Pelet. He leaves his job, and searches for Frances. When he finds her, he manages to find a new job at a college and they get married. After a time they return to England and set up their own school. They have a son, and William is a rather strict father to the boy. But they are happy. The story is rather lacking in action, and the awkward William is nothing like M Heger. He is clumsy and insensitive and bigoted. Charlotte revisited the Heger relationship and her time in Brussells when she wrote Vilette which is a much better novel

The Professor

This was Charlotte's first proper novel, which she tried to get published but it continually failed. She and her sisters also produced a book of their poetry but while that was published it failed dramatically. It got a few reviews but only sold 2 copies. Finally Charlotte, while she was nursing her father after his cataract operation, started to write Jane Eyre, and when she sent that to a publisher, George Smith, his reader was fascinated by the novel and found it impossible to put down. It was published, and was a roaring success. But the Professor never attracted much attention. It did not get published until some years after Charlotte's death, after being edited by her widower, Arthur Nicholls. It is based on her time in Brussels and is written from the point of view of the hero, William Crimsworth. William is an Englishman whose brother invites him to take a job in his business, starting as a clerk. William dislikes the work and he can't stand his brother's wife, so he decides to try his luck abroad and to become a teacher. He has a Yorkshire friend, Yorke Hunsden, who helps him to get a job in Brussels in a boys' school.

Shirley II

Shirley is not one of Charlotte's better novels. She researched the history of the Luddite riots in Yorkshire but social comment was not her forte. There is a touch of feminism, in that Shirley and Caroline both discuss careers for women.. but what Caroline really wants to do is to get married. She is depressed when Robert seems to be courting Shirley and Shirley in spite of her friendship with Caroline, seems willing to entertain Robert's addresses. However we learn that Shirley is in love with someone else, who only appears in the later part of the book. Louis, Robert's brother, is a tutor and Shirley loves him in spite of his low status. They get married, Robert's mill becomes successful again and he marries Caroline. The book is rather clumsy, with awkwardly comic portraits of the local curates, who are based on curates that Charlotte knew in Haworth. Shirley is said to be based on Emily Bronte.. but she is not really like her. However it was courageous of her to continue writing the book when she had suffered the awful losses of her two sisters and her brother.

Bad Quarto V

She perceives now what the connexion is between John Tallentire's death fall and Susan Inchman. She also works out that David, the druggie boy that she brought into her college room, upsetting her room mate, is her brother, who like her was brought up in care because of his mother's imprisonment and her suicide. Imogen wonders if Susan might be hiding out on a boat in the area, she's recently discovered that there are several house boats on the canal where people live who like the water or who can't afford a house in Cambridge. She goes investigating but when she returns home she finds Fran waiting desperately to tell her that Martin Mottle has been injured in a fracas at the college, shots were fired and he is in hospital. Imogen rushes there and finds that David Inchman is also in hospital. Martin Mottle has been stabbed and is badly injured but he will live. He tells her that he has been used to carry a gun for protection and in the fight with David he shot at him. David is also badly injured. Susan turns up then to see her brother and she tells Imogen that she caused young Tallentire's death. She was waiting around near VG's room for a tutorial and John rushed past her to go and do his jumping from building to building. She recognised him, and blamed him for being the son of the man who sent her mother to prison... and she loosens the rope knot. David breaks in and says that it wasn't Susan, it was him. Imogen thinks that it is going to be hard to prove who did it, if they both stick to their stories. But she thinks that its more likely that Susan did it. She is stronger than her brother, she has a hot angry temper, and she is much more likely to have managed to loosen a knot than David. She doesn't know what to do. If Susan killed Tallentire, its going to be hard to prove. Duncan Tallentire has said that he thinks no good would come of pursuing a case against whoever killed his son, and he feels guilty because he is no longer sure that his opinion about shaken baby syndrome is correct. Martin Mottle realises that Duncan was probably right. He agrees to try to minimise David's punishment. The two young men go to court and both are given a suspended sentence. Duncan Tallentire pays for David to have drug rehabiliation. Imogen tells Susan that she thinks she killed John, and that while there was a motive, and she has been unhappy and ill treated she is clearly a bit of a loose cannon and she worries about her losing her temper again... she suggests counselling. Susan tells her she is going to drop out of Cambridge and she's going to study law and try and help kids who end up in care. Imogen says that while the John Tallentire case is closed, it could be reopened if necessary and she would probably go down for it, rather than David. Susan looks shocked and agrees reluctantly to go for counselling. She takes David to the drug clinic, and Imogen hopes she will find some purpose in leaving Cambridge and studying law. She herself has been seeing an older man lately, an elderly don who is ill and she nursed him. She had grown very fond of him, and then he dies, leaving her with another broken relationship. But she does her best to recover from her depression. She is glad that the mystery of Tallentire's death has finally been solved.

Shirley - Charlotte Bronte

This novel was written by Charlotte after Jane Eyre's great success. She started it before her sisters and Brother all died, and completed it some months later having been through the appalling multiple bereavement. It is set in Yorkshire during the Napoleonic Wars. Shirley Keeldar, the heroine, is a wealthy heiress who has a valuable estate. She is mannish, likes the outdoors and is considered almost scandalous at times. She is friendly with Robert Moore who has a mill on her estate, and she becomes friendly with a girl of her own age, Caroline Helstone, who is the local clergyman's niece. Robert's business is in trouble, because of the war with Napoleon and he almost loses it. He thinks of marrying Shirley just for her money but she is not interested. Caroline however is in love with him and longs for him to notice her. Shirley feels sorry for the workers but she is a property holder and does not sympathise with them breaking machinery or rebelling against the mill owners. Caroline is depressed that her life is so limited, and that as a woman there's no prospect of her having a job to occupy her mind. M/F

Bad Quarto IV

Imogen is taken aback by the dumb show and the implication that a lecturer however tiresome Venton Gimps is, could have killed a student. However Mottle tells her and her friends from the drama group that he knew John Tallentire from when he was a child and he went climbing with him for years, and trusted him absolutely as a climber. He further demonstrates to her that if Tallentire had tied a knot that slipped a bit, (which he would not do) it still would not result in his falling right into the street and dying. He would have bounced off the walls in the narrow street and just been a bit injured. Mottle is angry about John's death and feels that there is a conspiracy to hide what happened, and that is because it might have been deliberate murder by one of the academics. Imogen feels she has to agree with him, that young Tallentire's fall was caused by someone else. However she meets Duncan Tallentire, his father, an eminent scientist who has come to Cambridge to take up a part time post. He tells her angrily that Mottle has an obsession about the fall, and that he knows what happened to his son, that he was killed but that no good can come of pursuing an investigation. She is startled. Then Susan disappears from college. Some of the staff think that she is just not up to Cambridge standards, and that she knew she didn't fit in there and wasn't clever enough, and that she just left. Imogen likes the girl, so she agrees to go and search for her - starting with a visit to Mary Ollery, her adoptive mother. Mary tells Imogen that most kids in care are damaged by their experiences, and relatively few of them ever manage to get out of the trap they are in, of being poor, lacking social skills and education. Imogen looks up Inchman, her surname, on the net, and finds that there was a woman Valerie Inchman who was jailed for killing her children some years ago.. and then she finds that Susan is Valerie's daughter. Valerie is now dead. Imogen finds out that Duncan Tallentire is often called as an expert witness for scientific issues in court cases, and that there is controversy about how accurate expert witnesses are. There were some cases of mothers being accused of shaking or battering their babies and it is not at all clear if the expert testimony that more than 2 injured children in a family means that the injury is non accidental.

Bad Quarto III

Imogen meets Susan as she is Samantha's room mate.. and can see that the girl while clever is not really happy in Cambridge. Frances tells her that Martin Mottle, who is the student who has offered the Drama society money to perform Hamlet, is still acting very badly, and the group are worried that the performance will damage their reputation. On the night of the play, Mottle insists that 2 friends of his should be in the gallery. The performance does not go too badly; his acting seems to suit the shorter blunter version of Hamlet.. but at the point where there should be a dumb show, Mottle's friends stage a replication of the accident that killed the young climber John Tallentire... with a rope and a window frame, and a student dressed like one of the more eccentric lecturers, Venton Gimps, appears. The real Venton Gimps has a room near to the one where Tallentire fell, and he likes to air controversial opinions and dress extravagantly so he is not much liked. He is appalled by this implication that he had some part in the death of young Tallentire and storms out, telling everyone that he will call his lawyer.

Bad Quarto part II

Frances tells Imogen that the student who insists on playing Hamlet is a terrible actor, but they are hoping that the one performance wont ruin their reputation as actors and that the money will solve all their problems. Imogen finds herself reading up on theories about Shakespeare, and is surprised to find that nowadays a lot of critics dislike his plays for being Imperialist, conservative, anti feminist etc. She gets a visit from Samantha, a literature student who is suffering from anxiety about her work and doing her exams. Samantha also complains that Susan, her current room mate, is a difficult girl and adds to her worries. Susan is from a poor background and she got into Cambridge via a scheme to help young people who missed out on education at school level but are bright. She is clever enough but she has a hot temper and a chip on her shoulder about her being poor and ill educated and is always complaining. She also brings in a young male friend who is dirty and seems to be taking drugs. Imogen finds that Susan was brought up largely in care, and that her foster mother adopted her when she got a bit older, to try and give her some stability. Drama happens when Samantha is found unconscious in her room and it seems like she's taken an overdose. Imogen gets her to hospital, but she is suspicious about the overdose. She thinks that Samantha didn't intend to kill herself, she just wanted to make herself ill and if she was ill at the time of her exam, she might be given a pass because of illness.

Bad Quarto an Imogen Quy Novel

This is I think the last novel written by Jill Paton Walsh about Imogen Quy. She was then employed by the Sayers estate to write continuations of the Lord Peter novels and concentrated on that. However I have never felt that these were very good and found them hard to read. The Bad Quarto refers to a version of Hamlet which has been around for centuries; it is a shorter less elaborate version of the play, and is occasionally performed. At the beginning of the novel, we learn of a tragic accident, where Imogen was called when a young student fell while jumping from building to building in the college, a dangerous hobby pursued by some students who like mountaineering. The student was killed and Imogen was upset but it was seen as an accident and measures were taken to make this leaping hobby more difficult to pursue. Soon afterwards Imogen goes to a meeting of the college drama society, as her lodger Frances Bullion is a member. They need someone to take minutes and she offers to help. At the meeting, the group discuss a major problem... They had a fire in their rehearsal room probably caused by carelessness by the students, and the room was damaged and the part time caretaker was hurt and is still unwell from smoke inhalation. They had let their insurance lapse through a foolish member of the group forgetting.. the member has now left. So they are liable for the damage and worry that Fred the caretaker might sue them though he is slowly getting better. They dont want to renege on their duty of care but the group is seriously in debt. However they are offered a chance to earn a large sum of money. Another student whose father is rich, proposes that they do a one off performance of the Bad Quarto, with him playing lead, and he will pay them a lot of money. It seems odd but they feel that they need to get the money somehow so they decide to accept the offer. M/F

Silver Wedding V

Deirdre's mother Eileen worries about her daughter as well, telling her that she thinks she failed her. She allowed Deirdre to live a superficial life, trying hard to keep up with the Joneses, and never finding reality. Deirdre had been a bright student, but she gave up studying and the idea of working when she got married. She dedicated herself to trying to make out that Desmond was doing as well as Frank Quigley. She tells her mother that at home her parents seemed obsessed with social standing and getting on, and that she felt inferior to her sister who married a rich man. Eileen says that while Sophie, Maureen's mother and some of their friends were indeed obsessed by social ranking and appearances, she honestly just wished for her children to be happy. And now she fears that Deirdre is so fixated on superficial things that she will never learn to be happy. Deirdre continues to fuss about the whole issue of the wedding anniversary and the day finally arrives. Frank Quigley comes and so does Maureen. He talks to Helen and she seems calmer and more rational; she has given up the idea of being a nun.. He says that he knows of a woman who has a small child. She is a career woman, and needs someone to take care of him, and would she like the job? Helen gets on well with children and she says it might be easier than what she had been trying to do so she agrees to take it on for a while. Des is occupied with his new work as Mr Patel's partner, and does his best to tolerate Deirdre's fixation on the party. He is happy with the new shop, but it does not look as if his marriage will ever be a very close one. He knows that he has disappointed his wife, by the fact that they had to get married and then lost their baby who was the reason for the marriage.. and that his lack of success in big business made her unhappy. At the party, Fr Jim, who is still depressed about his nephew's misbehaviour, thinks that Desmond and Deirdre are still not really happy- they seem to him to be playing at being husband and wife.. As a priest, he should be glad that the marriage has lasted 25 years but it still does not seem real to him. But the party goes fairly well. Frank tells everyone that he and his wife Renata are going to adopt a child, from South America. Brigid the nun has helped him arrange it. So he has found a new centre for his marriage. Maureen is happier too because she has found her father, now a widower, and is thinking of opening a shop in the UK near where he lives. Anna who broke up with her boyfriend a few months ago, has a new admirer and is happy. Brendan is glad that he made the effort to come back for his parents but he prefers Ireland. Helen hopes her new job will work out and Eileen hopes that her daughter will be happy now that she has celebrated 25 years of marriage, but is glad to be with her new beau.

Silver Wedding Part IV

Mr Patel who runs the little shop near the station in Desmonds suburb is relieved when Des offers to take over running the business while he is recovering from his injuries. Des finds that he enjoys being involved in a small hands on business much more than having a vague managerial position in a big firm. He and Mr Patel talk a lot and finally he decides to ask for redundancy and buy into the Patel business. Deirdre is not at all happy. She is still focussed on her preparations for the Silver Wedding, still worrying that people wont admire their party giving abilities and see how well she and her family have done. And she very much dislikes Desmond giving up being a manager to run a corner shop. Anna who is the helpful one in the family tries to soothe her and tell her that it doesn't matter that Brendan works on a farm, and that Helen seems to have no direction in her life. Brendan agrees to come back to London for the anniversary party, though he has always hated having to pretend that the family is doing much better than they really are. Deirdre tries to make the best of things, but she's not happy with all the changes in her family's life. Fr Jim had wondered when she told him she wanted to get married quickly, that she might be pregnant, and she denied it. But it turns out that she was pregnant, and went through a fairly speedy marriage, but she lost the baby early in the pregnancy, and her next child Anna was born a respectable time after the wedding. But Deirdre will never admit to this, to being less than perfect.

Doris Langley Moore Born 1902.

Doris was a writer and historian, who was passionately interested in fashion and items like furniture. She was born in Lancashire but was educated in South Africa; her father was a newspaper editor. She went to university and then in the 1920s she began to write books. She married and had a daughter. She had an interest also in art and theatre, and was the founder of a Fashion Museum in Bath. She also wrote several biographies, she was something of an authority on Byron and wrote biographies of him and his daughter. She also produced several novels, including one called Not At Home, which Ive just read. It is set in London just after the war, and is a wry comedy about Miss Farren, a middle aged woman who is not very well off and has a house which she is renting.. She is trying to reduce expenses and decides to let some rooms in the house. There is a terrible shortage of housing in England because of the war damage and people are desperate to find any place. She settles on a younger married woman who is married to an American journalist who is in the Forces. The lady has 2 children who are in the US, and tells Miss Farren that she will be a very careful tenant and no trouble at all.. However, it doesn't work out as she had hoped. Mrs Banks the new tenant is a silly childish woman who is both selfish and dishonest. She moves in and continually has guests staying and she creates a lot of work for Miss Farren's servant. She then cajoles her friends into helping out with the housework, to the point that she drives some of them away. She breaks things and lies about it, and is reluctant to pay for damages. Her husband comes to stay on leave and he is a sensible kind man who gets on well with Miss Farren. She can't understand how he tolerates his wife's silly selfish personality.

Silver Wedding Part III

Helen, Desmonds second daughter is a difficult girl. She is living in a convent which is just an inner city house with women who mostly find her hard to make sense of. They think she's running away from ordinary life and she has a knack of causing problems and getting things wrong. She is it turns out running away from an unhappy sexual experience. While she was still at school, Desmond lost his job in Frank's firm, and Helen clumsy as always tries to find a way of getting it back for him. She flirts with Frank and makes out that she's older and more experienced than she really is. He seduces her, and she freaks out. He realises that she is not very stable and that she is young and he should never have touched her. He gives Des his job back and avoids the family as much as he can, and when Helen is a bit older, she goes to try to find a place in the convent. In the months leading up to the Silver Wedding, Helen meets Renata, Frank's wife, who wants to adopt a child. She visits the convent and gets talking to Helen and again Helen makes a crazy attempt to do some good. A girl whom the nuns visit has a baby, in her bathroom and is so out of her mind on drugs that she doesn't really know what happened. Helen takes the baby and calls an ambulance for her, telling the ambulance people that she did not see a baby. Then she brings the newborn child to Renata who is horrified. A major fuss erupts and the baby is given to a foster carer and Helen realises that she has messed up again. Frank talks to Brigid, one of the older nuns who tells him that she might be able to help him find a child for adoption who would be legally theirs. The nuns feel that this episode is really the last straw and proves that Helen is not suitable for the religious life... so they tell her that after the Silver Wedding she has to make up her mind to leave and find her own path in the world. We also learn about the life of Fr James, the priest who performed the wedding ceremony. He lives in Ireland and is happy with his life as a priest, and he has always had his doubts about Desmond and Deirdre as a couple. He felt that they were putting up a front of being a loving happy couple because that is all they can do... they particularly Deirdre, are facade people. In his personal life, he has had his own troubles. He has a sister who married late in life and had one son. Gregory was a charming boy and studied law, then moved to Dublin to practice. Fr Jim is fond of his nephew till one night he gets a phone call very late. Gregory tells him that he was drink driving, and that he hit a cyclist who came out suddenly. He didn't stop and is afraid to go to the police. His uncle agrees to help him, but when he gets to the accident he finds the cyclist, a young woman student is dead. He covers up for his sister's sake, getting the car repaired and saying nothing. He feels that while Gregory has shown emotion, it is largely selfish fear, not remorse. Gregory tells him that he has given up drinking, and that he is giving money to charity to try to make up for his sin, and Jim wants to believe him. But he soon realises that the non drinking resolution did not last very long, and that Gegory is returning to his bad old ways. He tries to avoid his nephew, and time passes. Then he is visiting his sister when Gregory comes to stay but he is in a sulk because his parents dont want to lend him money. He goes off on his own and Fr Jim decides to go and fetch him from the pub. Gregory is drunk and refuses to let him drive; he takes the wheel, drives too fast. They crash into a traveller family with a cart, and Gregory begs his uncle to take the blame. Fr Jim looks after the travellers and ignores his request to lie for him. He knows this time he has to call the police.

Silver Wedding Part II

We begin to learn the secrets of the lives of the people who are attending the Silver wedding. Maureen's mother dies, and in sorting out her papers she finds that her father is not dead as she thought. He was working in South Africa when she was a child, and he had fallen in love with another woman. He asked his wife for a divorce, but she refused and told him that if he wanted out of the marriage he would have to disappear from their lives and she would tell her Dublin friends that he had died in Africa. Maureen starts hunting around and finds that her dad is still alive and is now living in a home in England. She is hurt and shocked that her mother deprived her of a father, because of her snobbery. She gets in contact with her father and likes him, and she tries to feel sorry for her mother who had only her social standing in Dublin society to live for. She was herself in love with Frank, Desmond's friend and now his boss, and thought of marrying him but her mother was against the idea and Frank took a dislike to her mother and their relationship fizzled out. Meanwhile Brendan, Desmond's son, has settled in Ireland where he can lead a peaceful unpretentious life, working on a farm, and not having to live up to his mother's social standards. He does not want to go back to London. Desmond is getting increasingly fed up with his wife's life which consists of putting on a show of perfection for her family and neighbours.. and he realises that he is never going to get any further in his job. He becomes friends with Mr Patel, the owner of a small local shop and when Mr Patel is injured by burglars, he offers to take over and run the business till he is better. Deirdre is horrified.

Silver Wedding By Maeve Binchy

Silver Wedding is another of Binchy's novels which has a series of chapters covering each character's point of view. It is set mainly in London in the present day, about a couple who are about to celebrate their Silver Wedding Anniversary. Deirdre Doyle, the wife, is a dissatisfied woman, who has little in her life to occupy her. She is disappointed that her husband Desmond has never been as successful as she hoped he would be. He has a managerial position in a food firm but he has not done as well as his friend Frank, who came over from Ireland with him years ago and who married the boss's daughter and became head of the firm. Deirdre and Desmond have 3 children.. Anna who works in a bookshop and who has found her boyfriend is cheating on her, Helen who is an odd girl who can't seem to settle to any work, and who has recently been living in a convent in London hoping to become a nun and Brendan who has left London and gone back to the small family farm in Ireland to work with his uncle. Maureen Deirdre's best friend was bridesmaid at the wedding, and she is now a middle aged successful businesswoman who owns a dress shop in Dublin... Deirdre makes a terrible fuss over planning for the anniversary, because that is all she has to think about. Desmond is very depressed because he is not sure he can hold onto his job as a manager and his marriage is an empty shell. Deirdre is busy with early preparations for the wedding party, when her mother suddenly arrives in London and asks her to come into town and meet her. When she gets there, she finds her mother Eileen, who is a widow, seems very lively and attractive, and is going on a cruise. She feels depressed by this. Then she is horrified to learn that her mother is going with an elderly beau, Tony who seems to be loud and vulgar and she can't understand how her mother, who always seemed obsessed with matters of class and status, would be seen in public with him. She also feels jealous that her elderly mother seems to be having much more fun than she is.

Evening Class Part V

Aidan realises that his marriage is over and he learns that Nell was having an affair, and he knows now that he is in love with Nora and wants to be with her. Nora has by now recovered from Mario's death and has fallen in love with Aidan. They set off for Rome, and the adventure begins. Connie decides to go though it is not the kind of fancy holiday she is used to. She is depressed that her marriage is a failure, and that Harry has ended up in prison for fraud. But he got a light sentence and will soon be out. When she arrives in Rome, she gets a message threatening her, and she begins to worry that it might be Siobhan, Harry's mistress who is angry that his wife reported him to the Fraud squad and that when he gets out of prison he will probably need to go to England to make a new life. But Connie cannot feel sympathy for Harry, since she found out that he demanded large payments from clients who had borrowed money from him, and one of the victims was Gus, Laddy's nephew who looks after him. Gus and his wife had a small hotel, and they had to pay a large sum to Harry's company which left them very close to losing the business and they were only saved by Connie getting involved. Nora is happy to be back in Italy, but she gets a big surprise when she finds that Alfredo, one of Mario's sons is now living in Rome, running a restaurant. She gets a warmer welcome from him than she expected and he tells her that Gabriella, Mario's wife, is dead.. she died of cancer only a few months after her husband. Nora is shocked. Then Alfredo tells her that although they didnt have much to do with her in the village, the children were all aware of her affair with their father and they respected her for keeping the affair discreet and for giving her father good advice. He now suggests that she could come back to Sicily and help in the family business. She doesn't know what to do. She lived there so long, and although she has made a new home in Ireland she is a little tempted by the idea of returning to Sicily. Connie goes out walking alone and finds that she is indeed being followed.. by Siobhan. She is terrified, but tries to keep cool. Siobhan has followed her into a cafe and she is forced to talk to her. Siobhan berates her for turning Harry in to the police. Connie remains calm though she is terrified, and tells Siobhan that she never hated her and was glad that Harry had just one woman - though she knows he also had other affairs. She then tells her that she has left a letter for her solicitors, in case she were to die suddenly in Rome. Siobhan is flummoxed by how cool Connie is being and seems to give up fighting. Connie hopes that when Harry comes out of prison he may go to the UK and take Siobhan with him.. but she is just relieved to have escaped the mistress's vengeance. Siobhan leaves her and she goes back to her hotel. The party go to visit the Italian family whom Laddy thought had invited him to come and see them. They remember him and feel a bit guilty that they inadvertently led him to think that he was to be a guest of theirs, but now they make up for it by welcoming him and his friends. He is delighted. As they plan to return to Ireland, Aidan tells Nell that he loves her and if she goes to Sicily it will break his heart. She tells him she will stay with him and Aidan will get a divorce and sell his house and buy a small flat. She has finally found love and respect from a man... and the group go back to Ireland.

Evening Class Part IV

Fran has to tell Kathy that her father Paul is from a well to do family and that he is now married to a very rich woman, and they are well known socialites in Dublin. She feels upset and angry that her fathers family paid her mother off and that she is poor while Paul is living a luxurious life. She decides to go and see him and makes her way boldly into his office. He is surprised to see her, and touched.. and they get on well. She tells him about Fran, and that her mother had a boyfriend a while ago who went to America but she stayed in Dublin to be with her child. Paul hopes that Fran will be happy some time and he and Kathy agree to stay in touch. Nora manages to extricate Lou from his association with the criminal gang and he and Suzi plan their wedding. Another member of the group is Barry who has a problem with his mother. She is convinced her husband is having an affair, and has gotten very depressed. She attempts suicide and is taken to hospital.. and while visiting her there, Barry meets Fiona, a shy girl who works in the hospital cafe. He tells Fiona about his mother and how its hard for him to cope with her. Fiona starts going to their house to learn cookery from his mother and she confides about how she believes her husband is seeing someone else. Fiona persuades her to smarten herself up and try to be more cheerful - and she finds out that the woman the father is seeing is Nell Dunne, the wife of Aidan. Fiona meets Dan, Barry's father at a party to celebrate the first year of the Italian classes, and Nell is also at the party. She tells Nell that Dan is a womaniser who once had an affair iwth her own mother and made her miserable, and that he has no respect for the women he seduces. Nell is angry but it scares her, and it appears that Dan is reconciling with his wife. The two of them seem happier and Nell faces the fact that her marriage to Aidan is pretty much over and her lover has also dropped her. Aidan and Nora prepare for the "viaggio", the trip to Rome where they can show off their Italian. Lou and Suzi decide to make it their honeymoon trip and they get married just before the departure for Rome. Tony O'Brien is surprised that the Italian classes have done so well. People enjoy them and noone has dropped out, and he admires Aidan for having had the bright idea of starting them. He and Grania are now together, though Aidan is not too happy with it.

Evening Class III

We learn that Harry Kane's business has failed and he comes close to bankruptcy, but Connie saves him by having invested money throughout her marriage which she now uses to bail him out. However Harry is not grateful and continues his affair with his secretary and to engage in dubious business practices. Connie gets on well with the people in her Italian class and is less lonely. Nora enjoys the work and she becomes friends with Aidan. However his wife is having an affair behind his back and is bored stiff with him. Another pupil at the class is Lou, a Dublin boy who works as a packer in an electrical goods shop. His parents own a small shop. He has gotten involved with a gang of criminals who use him to facilitate jobs, and he now regrets it although they have paid him generously. However, he meets a girl, Suzi, who is the daughter of Nora's landlords, and falls in love with her and he wants out of the criminal involvement. But his gang still want him to work for them, and suggest that he finds a place to stash things that they want kept for a few weeks. He's told to join the evening class so that he has an excuse for going into the school where security is fairly loose. He is not happy as he's not academic, but finds he enjoys the class. Laddy is another member of the class, he's a middle aged man who has learning difficulties, and he lives with his sister's son Gus and Gus's wife. They run a small hotel and at the hotel, Laddy met a rich Italian family and did them a favour, and they said he should come and visit them. Gus suggests that Laddy learn a bit of Italian, as he is trying to distract him from the idea of going to Italy.. since he does not think they really meant the invitation. Kathy Clark learns that Fran is not her sister but her mother. She became pregnant by a rich boy at the age of 16 and her family looked after her and she was treated as her grandparents' child. Fran is upset that she's found out the truth, but tells her that she will always be part of their family. Kathy finds that her father's family did not want him to marry Fran and they made a payment to the Clarks to keep it secret. Fran spent the money on bringing Kathy up.

Evening Class Part II

Aidan is delighted to find a teacher who will work for a small fee and who share his interest in Italy. They talk, and he feels a bit less depressed at not getting the headship and his wife's increasing coolness towards him. His elder daughter, Grainne, works in a bank and unknown to him, is seeing Tony OBrien, who has now become head of the school. She is angry when she finds that Tony got the job her father was hoping for but although he is several years older than her, she is attracted to him and goes on seeing him. The classes start and a surprising number of people turn up. One is Bill, a bank officer who knows Grainne. He is a nice shy lad who has a ditzy extravagant girlfriend. Another is a wealthy woman, Constance, who is married to a rich businessman. She and her husband have 4 children but their marriage is not very happy. Their sex life never worked out, and her husband soon turned to a mistress and ignores her. Connie's father was a gambler and he died in debt and her mother pushed her to find a well to do husband. She genuinely loved Harry but now after many years of an empty marriage she is depressed. Another pair who join the class are 2 sisters, Fran and Kathy Clark. Their father is a plumber and Kathy is still at school. Fran tries to encourage her sister to learn more and work towards getting a good job...

Evening Class by Maeve Binchy

Evening Class is a novel set in modern day Dublin, in Maeve's format of writing a chapter from each character's point of view. It starts with the return of Nora, a middle aged Irishwoman who has been living in Italy for many years. She went there because her Italian lover had told her that he could not marry her, that he was engaged to a girl in his home village and was expected to go back home to marry her. Nora followed him and managed to scrape a living teaching English and doing sewing. She waits for her lover to change his mind but instead sees him only occasionally for sex while he rears a family with his wife. Then after 20 years he is killed in a car crash and his wife tells Nora that she should leave the village. She has been shunned by her family in Ireland for having a long standing affair with a married man and does not know what will happen to her back in Dublin. She flies home and manages to find a room to live in a house in a working class estate near the Dublin mountains. She meets with her old friend Brenda, who runs a restaurant and Brenda tells her that she fears that Nora's family may welcome her back but it is because they want someone to look after her elderly mother. She advises her not to give way to their emotional blackmail. Meanwhile Aidan Quinn is a teacher at a school near to where Nora is living. He has 2 grown up daughters and a wife who seems indifferent to him. He had hopes of becoming headmaster of teh school, but is told by another teacher that its not going to happen, that he is not tough enough to manage a school in these hard times. Tony O'Brien, the other teacher, tells him that he himself is going to be headmaster and that AIdan should find another avenue to explore in teaching. Aidan dislikes Tony and thinks he is not a good teacher and is selfish and a bon vivant. But he knows he has lost the battle for the headship. With Tony encouraging him, he decides to set up Italian evening classes. Tony thinks that it will be hard to get funding for them but he wants to keep Aidan who is a good teacher, and he agrees to help. He tells Aidan that he himself is a better head for the present time, that he can argue with the Educational authorities, handle rebellious pupils and keep drug dealers at bay. Nora finds out the rumours and goes to Aidan and offers herself as an evening class teacher who can teach Italian.