a letter to Maeve

Dear Ms. Binchy,

Let me first off explain that I realize it is rather strange to be writing a letter to someone who has passed away, but for some reason I feel like you would get a kick out of it.  I feel like it would strike you as rather amusing, although, obviously having never met you I would not know for sure.

It does feel that we have met though, which is perhaps the strangest part of all.  I have read all of your books, although the word “read” probably doesn’t do justice to it.  I inhaled them, I devoured them and they have now become part of who I am.  Just yesterday I finished reading A Week in Winter, your most recent book, and, incredibly sadly, your last.

I wonder what you were thinking when you wrote it.  It is such an uplifting and ultimately inspiring tale that I feel you did not know it would be your last.  As I finished reading the last sentence I was both incredibly happy and incredibly sad, all in the same moment.

The world will miss you, I wonder if you know?  Obviously those that knew you best, were close to you, will miss you the most but we, those of us who read your books and loved your words, we will miss you too.  I hope you know.

I hope you know you made a difference.  Perhaps not in a way that those outside of your circle of readers would understand or even celebrate but for those of us inside the circle, we know.

I remember the first one of your books that I read.  It was Circle of Friends and I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I picked it up because they were making a movie out of it.  My mom and I were planning to go and see the movie and according to my mother you always need to read the book first, before you see the movie.  She always says the book is better, so you have to read it first.  And so we did.  She got us a copy and we read it, one right after the other and then off we went to see the movie.

She was right; the book was better.

And Circle of Friends led me to Copper Beech and then I lost touch with your words.  I was finishing high school at the time, and then off to university.  I lost track of your books as they came out, until a few years later when I needed to find them again.

I was living in a new city, away from family and friends, except for my then-fiance, now husband, who was completing his teaching degree in the area.  I was lonely, lost, unsure of my place.  I didn’t know how to fill the weekend hours when he was off studying and I was left to explore this city that I felt no connection to.  I decided to do what always gave me comfort; I went for a walk and found the local library.

I don’t remember what drew me back to your books, what made me pick one off the shelf after so long and carry it back home with me.  But what I do remember is falling in love with them all over again.

You have such a special way with your words, with the characters you write about.  They don’t seem like just characters, they seem like people I would pass on the street and want to get to know.  I read Evening Class and wanted desperately to be a part of it, to know those people, to be included in the world you had created for them.  There I was, alone in a new place wanting so much to fit in, and within the pages of that book you made me feel what I couldn’t find elsewhere.

Week after week I went back to the library, hoping against all hope that I would discover another of your books that I had not yet read.  If I close my eyes now, even all those years later, I can picture the library and the covers of the books, as if they are imprinted on my mind.  I believe that books find us when we need them the most and yours did; they found me there in that little local library when I felt like I didn’t have a friend.  Your words did that.  Your words that were written so many thousands of miles away from where they ended up.  I wish I could have told you then how much they mattered.

Through the years I continued to follow you, gobbling up each new book you published like I hadn’t eaten in years.  If I had to explain to someone what it is about your books that makes them so inherently readable, I don’t think I could.  I would just shove a copy of Quentins or Scarlet Feather into their hands and just say “read it and then you’ll understand.”  You write about people as they are, for good or bad.  You write about people’s relationships with each other, not just as they are on the surface but the truth, way down deep where we don’t often look.  It seems so simple; and yet I know how difficult simplicity can be.

And as I read the last pages of A Week in Winter I realized that your true gift is that you made it all seem so effortless.  Having sat down myself and tried to write something resembling a novel, I can now appreciate just how difficult it is.  But for us, the readers on the other side of the page, we don’t see any of that.  I’m sure you struggled.  I’m sure you threw up your hands in disgust along the way, turned away from the screen and feared what you were writing was never worth having anyone read.  Although I don’t know you at all, I’m sure that you did.

But you obviously went back.  Something pulled you back to the screen, back to the characters and lives you were forming, back to the pages you were filling with words.  I wish I knew what it was.  I wish we could sit down and chat about it.  I wish you were still there, thousands of miles away, plugging away on your words.  I wish I knew that in a couple of years there would be another book from you, another group of people who would become part of my life, part of the stories in my mind.

I’m sad that you’re gone.  I’m sad, selfishly, because there will be no more books.  I’m sad because I should have written this letter years ago when there might have been a remote chance that you would read it.  I’m sad that you will never know how your words, your characters, your books, touched me and, yes, even changed the person I have become, as cheezy as it sounds.

I think you would have thought that was pretty cool.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.

Yours truly.
T.