Title Details

No Nightingales, No Snakes
Buy Rights Online Interested in buying rights? Click here to make an offer

Rights Contact Login For More Details

More About This Title No Nightingales, No Snakes

  • English

English

Ireland is neither cursed with snakes, nor blessed with nightingales, and the characters in Maeve Binchy’s fiction occupy the same middle ground. These five stories, specially dramatised for BBC Radio 4, feature modern Irishwomen emerging from a culture where they knew their place into a more hazardous, but more rewarding light. In 'The Night People Came in for Something that was No Trouble', Cara’s envy of another couple’s disingenuous ease at giving dinner parties spurs her to plan the perfect ‘casual’ evening down to the last detail – but things don’t go as she’d intended. 'The Stepson' sees Clare walking on eggshells, taking great care not to try to replace her stepson Simon’s dead mother: until she finally attempts to break through his hostile diffidence. 'Decisions at Sea' finds Tessa, an overlooked but good-tempered secretary, heading out on a cruise, where she faces a big decision. In 'The Answer Machine', Biddy reasons that her family need an answer machine for Christmas, and gives it to them early – but, by Christmas, she is beginning to regret the whole idea. And in 'By The Time We Get to Clifden', Nessa and her husband Harry are planning their annual break to Clifden when neighbour Melly seeks their help, and ends up changing their itinerary and their lives. Featuring a full cast including Niamh Cusack, Sam Dale and Harry Towb, these five Maeve Binchy stories are all typically warm, wry and witty.

1 CD. 1 hr 15 mins.

  • English

English

Maeve Binchy was born in Dalkey, Ireland, in 1940. She went to school at the Holy Child Convent, Killiney, then attended University College, Dublin where she gained a BA in History. After graduation, she taught at several girls' schools and wrote in the holidays. She started her writing career as a journalist on the Irish Times, after her parents sent in the letters she had written while abroad travelling and the newspaper published them. At first a columnist, she later became Women's Editor, then turned to feature reporting and moved to London, where she met her husband Gordon Snell, a BBC presenter and author of children's books. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle (1982) was an instant hit in the UK and abroad, much to her own surprise: 'When I wrote my first book... hand on my heart, I thought only Irish people would read it. I didn't think anyone else would be interested in the problems of people in dull, wet places'. But her trademark portraits of Irish contemporary society, combined with her warmth, wit and compassionate interest in people's lives, brought her a legion of devoted fans, and her books were translated into many languages. Her novels included Tara Road, which was selected for Oprah Winfrey's Book Club, and Circle of Friends (1995), which was adapted by Andrew Davies into a highly successful film starring Minnie Driver and Chris O'Donnell. She also wrote short story collections, non-fiction books and several plays, but preferred to be described simply as a storyteller, claiming that 'people think that novelists have style... I don't have any style. I don't write like Margaret Atwood or Fay Weldon, I don't write like anybody. I write as if I was talking. That has been useful to me. If you just talk away, that's where you're nearest the truth, nearest yourself. I write as if I was telling a story to a friend.' Maeve Binchy was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Book Awards in 1999, and the President of Ireland presented her with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Irish Book Awards in 2010. She died in 2012.
loading