Because of a series of miscarriages and stillbirths, that snobby doctor’s wife has only one child, a handsome lad named David. Townsfolk stop in for cigs and black pudding.

Tourists climbing up from the beach pause there for ice cream wrapped in newspaper. Three families share the focus here: Molly and Paddy Powers are part of the “gentry ” he’s the town doctor, she’s from Dublin, pines for distractions, dresses in two-piece knits, gets her hair “done” once a week, holds herself above the rest of the town, and-because of her largely self-imposed isolation-turns from a snob to a monster.Īt the other end of the spectrum, Agnes and Tom O’Brien own a cluttered store on the cliffside. No one will ever die of loneliness in this little town, the way people might in a big city like London, or even Dublin, but intolerance and ignorance are the watchwords, and although no one in Castlebay is terribly rich, many are terribly, irredeemably poor.Īll of the sociological details of the town of Castlebay are right on the money. “Echoes” is in Ireland, in a skimpy little seaside resort that must make enough money to exist economically for the rest of the year from a slim 11-week summer season. That is, “Echoes,” if I read correctly, is food for the minds and hearts of women who are staying home with their children but women who know how to read, who yearn for the larger world outside their dooryards, and who remember, however dimly, that there’s something else to life.

This is the kind of long, female-oriented, romance-family that is meant to be read by literate women with lots of time on their hands.

Echoes by Maeve Binchy