Firefly Summer

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More About This Title Firefly Summer

English

In Mountfern, life meanders as slowly as the river running through it. The pace has hardly changed since the great house burned down in the Troubles and its shell became an ivy-clad playground for the local children. But when Patrick O'Neill arrives from the States with grand plans to turn the ruins of Fernscourt into Ireland's finest hotel, ripples begin to appear on the surface calm of this backwater. Brimming with speculation about the wealthy, charming American, the little community wonders how he will affect their lives. Unfortunately, some will learn all too painfully that their peaceful world is about to be changed irreversibly, and that new friendships, passions and tragedies will destroy the old Mountfern forever. All the warmth and wit of Maeve Binchy's original novel is captured in this compelling BBC Radio 4 dramatisation, starring David Soul as Patrick O'Neill, with Lorcan Cranitch as John Ryan.

3 CDs. 2 hrs 49 mins.

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.
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