Goodbye to Maeve Binchy

I was sorry to read of Maeve Binchy's death at age 76. She was one of my favorite authors. I admired her ability to create a sense of place without heavy use of dialect. A word here and there, a particular choice of word order, now and then an eejit accusation leveled against a character was all it took to let us know that we were in Ireland. Her books have given me hours of pleasure over the years. It is some consolation to learn that she had just turned in a manuscript to her editor that is slated for publication in October. We will have one more Maeve Binchy book, this one called A Week in Winter, to warm us inside an out during the cold weather. I plan to brew a cup of my favorite tea, toast some soda bread, and snuggle up and relax one last time with one of the great ones.