Evening Class

SIGNORA

For years, yes years, when Nora O'Donoghue lived in Sicily, she had received no letter at all from home.

She used to look hopefully at il postino as he came up the little street under the hot blue sky. But there was never a letter from Ireland, even though she wrote regularly on the first of every month to tell them how she was getting on. She had bought carbon paper; it was another thing hard to describe and translate in the shop where they sold writing paper and pencils and envelopes. But Nora needed to know what she had told them already, so that she would not contradict herself when she wrote. Since the whole life she described was a lie, she might as well make it the same lie. They would never reply, but they would read the letters. They would pass them from one to the other with heavy sighs, raised eyebrows, and deep shakes of the head. Poor stupid, headstrong Nora who couldn't see what a fool she had made of herself, wouldn't cut her losses and come back home.

"There was no reasoning with her," her mother would say.

"The girl was beyond help and showed no remorse" would be her father's view. He was a very religious man, and in his eyes the sin of having loved Mario outside marriage was greater far than having followed him out to the remote village of Annunziata even when he had said he wouldn't marry her.

If she had known that they wouldn't get in touch at all, she would have pretended that she and Mario were married. At least her old father would have slept easier in his bed and not feared so much the thought of meeting God and explaining the mortal sin of his daughter's adultery.

But then she would not have been able to do that because Mario had insisted on being upfront with them.

"I would love to marry your daughter," he had said, with his big dark eyes looking from her father to her mother backward and forward. "But sadly, sadly it is not possible. My family want me very much to marry Gabriella and her family

Autoren-Porträt von Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy wurde in Dublin geboren, studierte Geschichteund arbeitete als Lehrerin. 1969 ging sie als Kolumnistin zur Irish Times. Siehat zahlreiche Romane, Kurzgeschichten und Theaterstücke geschrieben. IhreRomane, darunter Der grüne See, Die irische Signora und EinHaus in Irland wurden in England, den USA und in Deutschland zuBestsellern.

"Charming...engrossing...unforgettable."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Good storytelling . . . Binchy deftly focuses on each character in turn, probing the hidden dramas of their lives."
--Chicago Tribune

"Reading one of Maeve Binchy's novels is like coming home."
--The Washington Post

A Main Selection of the Literary Guild and the  Doubleday Book Club