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A review by barrypierce
The Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy
2.0
It’s no secret that I have become quite enamoured with Maeve Binchy this year. After I devoured her first novel, Light A Penny Candle, a few months back I decided to see what her shorter fiction had in store. It is with an air of sadness that I then have to write that I didn’t really enjoy The Lilac Bus (1984). The book is less a novel but more a series of short stories about a group of people. The central conceit is that there is a bus, a lilac-coloured bus, which drives from Dublin to the small of village of Rathdoon every weekend. Each person who takes this bus is gifted, by Binchy, with a vignette on their lives. We go from person to person, seat to seat, to discover who’s hiding what – every person has a story to tell.
I read the blurb of this one and thought it sounded fascinating. I usually enjoy character studies. However, Binchy just didn’t seem able to connect everything together. After reading some people’s stories you are left questioning what exactly is the overall narrative here. The answer is that there is no narrative. The entire book is disjointed and there is no flow what-so-ever. It is also quite clear to read that Binchy had a lot more fun writing about some characters than others. I will say that there are a couple of good stories in here and they are typically Binchy so they definitely alleviate this novel of most of its downfalls. My overall feeling toward The Lilac Bus is ‘meh’. It could have been so much better.
I read the blurb of this one and thought it sounded fascinating. I usually enjoy character studies. However, Binchy just didn’t seem able to connect everything together. After reading some people’s stories you are left questioning what exactly is the overall narrative here. The answer is that there is no narrative. The entire book is disjointed and there is no flow what-so-ever. It is also quite clear to read that Binchy had a lot more fun writing about some characters than others. I will say that there are a couple of good stories in here and they are typically Binchy so they definitely alleviate this novel of most of its downfalls. My overall feeling toward The Lilac Bus is ‘meh’. It could have been so much better.