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A LITERARY
BLOG ABOUT BOOKS How they affect us. How they shape our lives.
Note: Postings
made when muses strike. Watch for blog alert notices via email, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. "We read to know we are not alone." C.S. Lewis Copyright 2011-2018
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12 Reading Recommendations Please click a book image to purchase it on Amazon.
Novels, books, and musicals June has written and published: Click a book image to purchase it on www.amazon.com
"Meditations
for New Members is a beautifully written little book...a gem. The thoughts are striking and orginal--a
few are quite profound." --Fiona Hodgkin, author of The Tennis Player from Bermuda
Sponsored in part by Dani's Pantry Fine authentic Italian food. Cucina con Amore! https://amzn.to/2HdlA
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Services Proofreading, Editing, Rewites, Assistance with Self-publishing. "It's the write thing to do."
"I like what you've done with my
book. Makes me fall in love with it all over again." --Olajuwon Dare, author of Eleven Eleven
Contact
June at JuneJ@JuneJMcInerney.com on Facebook.com, or at www.BSetiPupPublising.com
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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Irish
Lullaby
I haven't been in a good mood lately. As a matter of fact, I've been rather surly for
the last week or so, grumbling at grocery clerks, scowling at cheerful "Hellos!", and even yelling at poor FrankieB.
This is not like the normally cheerful me. I am not sure if this is because those around me—friends neighbors,
distant family—are cocooning inwardly away for the holidays or that the lingering, rheumy vestiges of a nasty cold have
kept me sequestered, or that I'm weeks—no, months—behind in my writing schedule or that suddenly there are house
repairs that need to be made that I can no longer afford on a very limited retirement budget. In any one or all of these events,
a general merry malaise and piqued annoyance has set in. I just can't seem to shake it. Not even with a great novel. Well,
almost not even. There is one...
I have read a Maeve Binchy novel each year, ever since her first novel, Light A Penny Candle , was released in April 1983. A dear friend introduced me to the heartwarming, almost gushy sentimental writings of this
dear, mainline Irish writer, and I've been a fan of hers ever since. She has written twenty novels—publishing one state-side
each spring. Yet, for some reason, though, I missed reading Minding Frankie1, her nineteenth2, which, ordered last year, has been sitting in the middle of my now too tall To-Be-Read
stack. I found it last week, scowling at the pile in the barest hopes I might find something to sooth my irrational irritability.
And so I settled in with it early one afternoon and couldn't put it down until I finished it two days later.
There
is something about Maeve Binchy, whose writings always soothed the savage soul—much like a softly sung Irish lullaby
can calm a fusty baby. Minding Frankie is no exception. Set in Dublin, Ireland and its environs, as all Binchy's novels are, this engrossingly fast read is a stylistic
portrait of a close-knit community that rallies around Noel Lynch, a young recovering alcoholic, who takes on the care and
"minding" of Frankie, whose mother dies from cancer-related complications during childbirth. As the community envelops
the baby and Noel with much baby-tending assistance and lots of familial love, each of its members comes to grips with his/her
own life-altering events. Outside of the crass, clueless social worker, Moira Tierney, an over-the-top nosy, pushy, busybody—a
trait that is supposedly an asset to her job—each of the characters we meet are warm, loving, and kind. Yet, with Binchy's
incredible talent of character insight, each of them has an all-too-real human nature, replete with all-too-real flaws and
foibles. Reading about them as they go through their daily lives is like reading the intimate details of your(my) own neighbors,
families, and friends.
How Noel struggles to overcome his drinking addition and his doubts; how Moira learns what
it truly means to be a friend; how Emily, a distant American cousin, helps the community gel together to help each other almost
seems like the stuff of fluffy fairy tale novels. Expect, in this case, it's, again, an all-too-real deep depiction of life
at its best; written by a great author at her best. This is a rare insight into the realties of life and the close bonds of
friends and family. Lives and loves such as those that Maeve happily knew well and wrote well about until her untimely death
this past July at the young age of 70. Her legacy is not only the elevation of the soul in reading Minding Frankie, but the touching of all of her reader's human hearts by all of her insightfully sensitive novels.
While her presence
will be greatly missed in the larger literary community, her books will live on, like the lilting refrains of a beloved Irish
lullaby. ~~~~~~ 1 © 2010 by Maeve Binchy. 383 pages, hardback. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY. 2011.
United States first edition. 2 Binchy's last and latest novel, A Week in Winter , was completed shortly before her demise and is now published in the United Kingdom. It is schedule to be released in the
United States in Spring 2013.
2:45 pm est
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June
J. McInerney, the host of this Literary Blog, is
an author, poet, and librettist. Her currently published works include a novel, a book of spiritual inspirations,
two
volumes of poetry, stories
for children (of all ages) and
a variety of children's musicals. Her titles include: Miss Elmira's Secret Treasure:
A Novel of Phoenixville during the Early 1900s Colonial Theatre: A Novel of Phoenixville
during the Roarin' 20s Phoenix Hose, Hook & Ladder: A Novel of Phoenixville during
World War I Columbia Hotel: A Novel of Phoenixville during the Early 1900s the Schuylkill Monster: A Novel of Phoenixville in 1978
The Prisoner's
Portrait: A Novel of Phoenxville during World War II
Forty-Thirty Rainbow in the Sky Meditations for New Members
Adventures
of Oreigh Ogglefont The Basset Chronicles. Cats of Nine Tales Spinach
Water: A Collection of Poems Exodus Ending: A
Collection of More Spiritual Poems
We Three Kings Beauty and the Beast Bethlehem Noah's
Rainbow Peter, Wolf, and Red Riding
Hood
Originally from the New York metropolitan area, June currently lives near Valley Forge Park in Pennsylvania with her constant and loving companions, FrankieBernard and Sebastian Cat. She
is currently working on her sixth novel.
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