Irish Girls About Town (by Maeve Binchy and others)

(Amazon UK link)

I picked this book up second-hand, spotting the name of Maeve Binchy on the cover. I thought it might be a collection of her short stories which I had not previously read.

However, 'Irish Girls About Town' turns out to be a mixture of short stories by sixteen different authors, all of them Irish women. It was originally sold in aid of Barnardo's. It's not a collection to be read at one sitting, but it was easy enough over a few evenings to settle down and read one or two at a time.

I found the writing quality very mixed. I thoroughly enjoyed the one story by Maeve Binchy. It was a sort of epilogue to her novel 'Evening Class', which I recently re-read. There were two or three other stories which I felt were well worth reading too.

But there were three or four other stories which seemed to have little substance. They were the kind of story I would expect in a garish teenage magazine. The plots involved the most basic 'girl meets boy and ends up in bed with him' type; these chapters had little characterisation and no depth at all.

The rest of them were of varying quality and interest. Some were predictable but pleasant enough, some were a little bizarre. A day after finishing the book, I find that none of them is particularly memorable. Even glancing down the list of titles, I can only recall about half of them.

Still, it was a pleasant enough diversion for a few evenings, with one or two gems. I'm glad I didn't buy it new but am pleased to have read Maeve Binchy's contribution.