(no subject)

raven recently reminded me of the existence of Maeve Binchy, several of whose books served as extreme comfort reading for me when I was young, which resulted in the happy discovery that I still had my favorite one sitting around the house!

Evening Class is a sort of assemblage of a novel about an Italian language class for working-class adults that, as a result of some complicated interpersonal politics, ends up being offered out of a high school in a struggling neighborhood in Dublin. It's a passion project of one of the teachers, and nobody expects it to succeed or even fill its minimum registration number -- but of course in fact it does, and everyone who takes it ends up having their life changed in some way by the novel experience of actually having fun while learning.

Each section of the novel focuses on one of the people in the class, with other characters in the community moving through and around each narrative. Their lives are full of affairs and mid-life crises and failing marriages and difficult financial decisions , and the backstories involve a variety of grim topics including rape and spousal abuse and attempted suicide, and yet the book's kindness and optimism and sense of community pulls it all together into an extremely warm and soothing whole.

Among the wide cast of characters, particular favorites include:

- Connie/Constanza, whom I recall clearly as the first asexual character I ever read about (though this 1996 book doesn't use that term, it's pretty unambiguous); a wealthy woman in an unhappy marriage whose arc is about a.) discovering that her husband is a dick and it's not her fault and b.) and therefore she should feel absolutely no guilt for redistributing his assets

- Fiona, mousy and indecisive, whose series of attempts to cheer up her new boyfriend's very depressed mother almost go extremely wrong and then, somehow, against all reason, spontaneously reverse course and instead go extremely right

- Lou/Luigi, a very small-time criminal who from the outside is universally perceived as a sinister and suspicious individual and from the inside is a BABY.

"And could you try to look a bit ferocious when you're talking to him?"
"I'll try," said Luigi, who thought it was something he might have to work at.

But really the thing I love about it is how you see everyone's lives brushing against each other in expected and unexpected, and the way everyone gets really enthused about learning and their confidence grows accordingly, and the book's firm thesis that a story about someone adding a little bit of joy to their lives is always a story worth telling.