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Book Description
With the insight, humor, and compassion we have come to expect from her, Maeve Binchy tells a story of family, friends, patients, and staff who are part of a heart clinic in a community caught between the old and the new Ireland.

Dr. Clara Casey has been offered the thankless job of establishing the underfunded clinic and agrees to take it on for a year. She has plenty on her plate already—two difficult adult daughters and the unwanted attentions of her ex-husband—but she assembles a wonderfully diverse staff devoted to helping their demanding, often difficult patients.

Before long the clinic is established as an essential part of the community, and Clara must decide whether or not to leave a place where lives are saved, courage is rewarded, and humor and optimism triumph over greed and self-pity.

Heart and Soul is Maeve Binchy at her storytelling best.

Q: Heart and Soul is set in a heart clinic. Why did you choose this setting and how does it influence the story?
MB: I set Heart and Soul in a heart clinic because I attend one myself. I have always found it a place of hope and optimism where they teach you how to manage your heart disease and not to be afraid of it. When I was young if anyone had a heart attack we thought it was goodbye. But not nowadays.

It seemed like a good place to set a story, a place where people were slowly getting courage to live their lives to the fullest. And I wanted to make it cheerful and positive and funny, which is what we all need.

Q: The book centers on Clara, the doctor in charge of the clinic, but the book also follows quite an ensemble of characters with intertwining stories. How does your work within the discipline of short story writing contribute to your work within the novel genre?
MB: I like to concentrate on the bit part players, the supporting cast as well as the main characters, so it’s often interesting to pause and follow somebody home to a different life while still connecting them to the main story. Then when that person appears again it is like meeting an old friend.

Because I do write short stories I suppose I find it easy to slip into someone’s life for a short time and then leave.

Q: New characters are joined by a few from past books, including Nora from Evening Class, Maud and Simon from Scarlet Feather, and Quentins itself (if I can call a restaurant a character). How did you decide which characters to bring back to life?
MB: I decided to bring back characters whose lives were not finished and tidied up. I was even wondering myself would Vonni ever find her long lost son? Would Signora be happy when she married Aidan? How the twins Maud and Simon would turn out when they stopped being twelve year olds. I wondered would poor Father Flynn, who was so basically decent, survive in the parish where they were all obsessed with the Holy Well or would he get a more relevant posting. I so enjoyed meeting them all again and I think the readers like it too.

Q: Irish culture is known for its storytelling, both in the oral and written tradition. Do you also enjoy telling stories out loud? Are you the life of the dinner party?
MB: The Irish do love telling stories and we are suspicious of people who don’t have long complicated conversations. There used to be a rule in Etiquette Books that you invited four talkers and four listeners to a dinner party. That doesn’t work in Ireland because nobody knows four listeners. I do talk a lot at dinner parties--I hope not too much but then I love other people to talk also. I am edgy and anxious when people just nod and smile instead of having views on every subject under the sun.

Q: Your books capture the culture of Ireland. Although Ireland has not escaped the recent economic downturn, how has Ireland’s rapid growth--finally joining the ranks of the world’s wealthiest countries following centuries of poverty--influenced your storytelling?
MB: Ireland changed a great deal in my lifetime. People became much more wealthy because of being members of the European community. The influence of the Catholic Church changed--once we feared the clergy and were in awe of them and now it is much easier and more communal. Once no foreigners came to work here since there wasn’t enough work for ourselves, but now it’s multicultural and you could hear twenty languages being spoken all around you. It has been a great help to the country and given us all more confidence.

Q: Your first book was published in 1982. Has your writing process changed over the years? How do you continue to challenge yourself?
MB: When I started writing I used to concentrate on the 50s and 60s when I was young, but I needed to try to become more modern and catch up on today’s Ireland. So I started to watch the young Irish people and talk to them as if they were a different tribe, which in many ways they are!

I discovered that they are not so different to my generation, they have more freedom, more responsibility and more courage than we had but they also have areas of uncertainty and unrequited love as we all did.

Q: What are you working on next?
MB: I am working at the moment on writing a three page outline for another novel. I must make it interesting enough for the publishers to like it and give me the go ahead. It should be in the same style as the books I have already written but not visit the same topics and repeat myself.

Q: Describe a typical day spent writing. Do you have any unusual writing habits?
MB: A typical day is breakfast (grapefruit and Irish soda bread and tea), then on to a big bright work room upstairs. [My husband and I] both try to be at our desks there at 8:30 am and we work until 1 pm. This includes answering mail and filing. We have a secretary one day a week. Then when work is over we have lunch and play a game of chess--we play seven days a week and have been doing so for over thirty years and we are still hopeless at it but love it to bits.

Q: With two writers in one household, do you and your husband give each other feedback or work separately?
MB: We have one long desk in our study upstairs--Gordon [Snell] is at one end and I am at the other. He writes his children’s books and verses and I do my stories. We always read each other our work in the afternoon. The rules are that we must be honest. No false praise. We allow the other ten minutes sulking time if we don’t like what we’ve heard. But then we have to accept or reject the criticism. No one is allowed to brood over it!

Q: What are you reading now? What are some of your favorite books and authors?
MB: I have just begun Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, which seems terrific. There are so many but off the top of my head here are some names of authors I love: Anne Tyler, Harlan Coben, Lee Child, and David Baldacci.

(Photo ? David Timmons)

Customer Reviews:

• A Bit Tedious And Contrived
  I have read many of Binchy's books and this one is the weakest. She is stringing together tedious vignettes of her characters. Based on a new cardiology clinic operated by Dr. Clare Casey, an attractive, almost-divorced cardiologist, Binchy brings in the stories of patients, their families and the staff and their families and extended friends. She does weave interesting plots at times but after 300 pages, I know what is going to happen.
  I believe the strength in the book is in her mother-daughter relationships. They are realistic, particularly the dialogue. She also updates her novel by including e-mail, passwords and other techy usages to make her characters seem real. I believe it would have been more interesting to concentrate and flesh out a few characters, rather than jump from one to the other. She is a master, however, of segue....more info
• Wonderfully intricate, beautifully developed
  I greatly admire the depth of each character portrayed in Heart and Soul, as well as the attention to detail and backstory for the characters. The characters, in addition to the plot line, are handled with skill and a fine eye for storytelling. Recommended read....more info
• eBook errors
  I downloaded this book so my wife could read on the Kindle. The Kindle version of this has a number of grammatical and format errors. I wonder if this is true of all eBooks. I like the Kindle but the book quality needs to improve....more info
• This is the perfect metaphor for a tale about love, of all varieties, lost and found
  Bestselling author Maeve Binchy is the undisputed modern-day mother of Irish fiction. In her latest novel, HEART AND SOUL, she once again taps into the very soul of the Irish people, portraying in her characters their often irreverent wit, tough stoic exteriors and soft sensitivities.
  
  HEART AND SOUL opens with a prologue describing the establishment of a new heart clinic. Binchy writes of the clinic's board members: "(they) had been foolishly influenced by some statistic recently published that seemed to prove the Irish had more than their fair share of heart failure." This is the perfect metaphor for a tale about love, of all varieties, lost and found.
  
  Clara Casey, the head of the underfunded clinic, sets about to create a state-of-the-art clinic despite not really wanting the job. Still trying to find herself after a three-year separation from a philandering husband, she throws herself into the task, disregarding the hospital administrators at every juncture. She gathers around her a patchwork crowd of characters, including nurses, a young doctor, an aide, a security guard and an assistant. They are a motley group that quickly forms a well-oiled machine. And what unfolds in HEART AND SOUL are their stories. The center Clara first described as "the place without a soul" evolves into a place not only with soul but with lots of love.
  
  Declan, a doctor, and Fiona, a nurse, find each other --- and, in the process, also find love. Hilary struggles with how to care for an aging and ailing mother who helped her raise her son. Ania suffers heartache over a married man who led her on but finds someone new at the hospital. And there are the patients themselves, who ease their way into the reader's heart with their oh-so-human quirks, like Judy and her dogs, which she considers to be her loves. And finally there's Clara herself, who spent years "hiding her feelings and disguising her reactions."
  
  The clinic has curative powers, for sure. Hearts are restored to good health, physically and emotionally. In the end, describing the clinic and the romances that developed, Clara jokingly says, "[W]e can say the objectives have all been achieved." And Binchy's objective --- another great story of the endurance of the Irish people --- is achieved as well, with warmth and spirit, and heart and soul.
  
  --- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara...more info
• A bit scattered
  I love Maeve Binchy's quiet storytelling power. She has such a way of being able to make us care about the character's she creates. This outing however, was very scattered. Rather than focusing on the story of the heart clinic that this book has been described as being about, we get a couple chapters on the clinic and the loveable cast of characters affiliated with it. Then the story goes off course and brings in characters from past novels, catching us up on what they are doing now. Although it was sort of like visiting old friends overall I found it to be distracting and wished she had given the heart clinic and its characters the book they deserved..one about THEM. As with all of Ms. Binchy's books I would reccommend this one if you have read the others...if you haven't I would suggest one of her other delightful books for example..tara rd. or scarlet feather....more info
• Heart & Soul by Maeve Binchy
  Another great read from Binchy. And Amazon.com sent it faster actually than they predicted! Thank you....more info
• Book of the Year
  The best book of the 19 best sellers I've read in the past six months. ...more info
• Heart and Soul
  Fabulous story. Binchy brings back to us many of her characters we have grown to love. Like visiting with old and dear friends again....more info
• Starts out well but quickly runs out of steam
  I really wanted to believe that this book was a return to form for Maeve and got stuck into it avidly but after a while found that I was losing interest and even skipping pages to get to the 'meatier' bits (always a bad sign). The book has a great premise but is lazily written and has far too many minor characters who detract from the main storyline (which for me is Clara) and add nothing to the book. Nora and Aidan took the whole of Evening Class to get together, here people such as Fiona and Declan -are rushed into romances simply it seems because they are both single and in the same age group. I really have no idea why - I would far rather have had their relationship fleshed out a bit, rather than be rushed on to a new storyline just as I had begun to care about them. It flags badly in the middle as she introduced more and more characters from other books - the dreadful twins from Scarlet Feather are brought back as are several unmemorable characters from NOR&S (easily her worst book IMO). I'm sorry to say that I totally skipped any parts involving them.
  
  But in a way the appearances of Aidan and Nora from Evening Class are the most disappointing - they are mere shadows of their former selves - and I particularly found it hard to accept Nora's original defeatist stance towards Aidan's illness as anything other than a weak plot device. In fact - as other reviewers have said - all their appearance did was to highlight how weak this book was compared to Binchy's earlier works.
  
  My recommendation would be - only buy this if you get the chance to pick up a used copy very cheaply - whatever this book has - it most definitely does NOT have heart and soul. The characters go through the motions but in the end most of them are nothing more than lifeless puppets ......more info
• HEART AND SOUL
  
  
  MAEVE BINCHY IS ONE OF OUR GREAT WRITERS ------
  
  EACH ONE OF HER BOOKS IS A MASTERPIECE IN ITSELF.
  ...more info
• Too much of a good thing.
  I simply love Maeve Binchy, but was sort of disappointed here. There were so many characters having so many issues, that the narrative glanced off many of the plotlines without getting into any really satisfying depth a fair amount of the time. I started getting confused as to who was who. I would have preferred fewer, but more carefully and richly drawn character motivations. There were at least 6 or 7 intriguing threads that would have made absorbing reading if analyzed skillfully, but instead they were tossed out more in outline form, than in the deeply comforting way that Binchy has in the past proven herself fully capable. It's almost as if she was trying to pack into one book as many suggestions as possible for a wealth of germinal novels....more info
• Maeve Binchy's latest
  I truly wanted to love this book as I have so enjoyed most of Maeve Binchy's prior work. However, I found that the story was a bit tedious and not as enjoyable for me as some of her past works.
  
  The story revolves around a heart health clinic in Dublin and Dr. Clara Casey who runs the heart health center. Various relationships that evolve are followed and explored via characters who work at or are involved with the health center.
  
  The book was good but not as great as previous books like Tara Road, Quintons and Scarlet Feather. I was just not as drawn into the story as I was with the author's other work....more info
• I'm never disappointed with Maeve Binchy
  I have missed the last few Maeve Binchy books and just had to get this one. I have been reading her books since Circle of Friends and there is not one yet that I haven't loved.
  
  As always, Heart and Soul is filled with wonderful characters that soon seem like real people and friends and you just can't wait to turn the page and see what happens in their lives. This one is set in Dublin and is set around a doctor, Clara Casey, and the heart clinic where she practices. Two grown daughters, an ex-husband, staff, patients and the Irish community they are in. Overall, it adds up to another wonderful read from Maeve Binchy. ...more info
• Disappointing
  I've read and enjoyed Maeve Binchy's books before, but this one missed the mark. Characters were still being introduced more than half way through the novel and then rarely mentioned again. Story lines seemed to start and stop abruptly, with little direction or tie in to the overall story line. While Clara's story carried throughout, I found myself not caring much about many of the characters and all the detours from her story to be distracting and of little consequence. I did not find these characters to be developed well at all. It's not a book that delivers a well-written story to its readers....more info
• New characters you'll love and hate
  Reading Maeve Binchy is akin to reading recent Ireland history, but more absorbing. Irish society has changed since Binchy gave us Circle of Friends and this she reveals through intriguing new characters and situations. In Heart and Soul, the reader is transported to modern Dublin with occasional side trips to Poland. Old characters, which we love in her many other books, make appearances; new characters cause tears and laughter and occasional exasperation. The author created a convincing commentary on modern Irish society. Kudos to Maeve Binchy.
  --Kathy Noltze
  
  
  ...more info
• A Sequal to Quentins?
  Binchy's books are beginning to sound like an unending circle as characters spring from one book into another. This one has a group of uninteresting characters who in her usual style all gather in the end with the expected results. One can predict the plot of her next book.
  ...more info
• Not My Favorite Maeve!
  I couldn't wait to read Maeve's latest novel, Heart and Soul. It started out wonderfully, got a little bogged down in the middle and then really dragged towards the end. Although this was not a sequel to any of her previous books, she introduced characters from previous books that just didn't fit in with this story line. She made a big deal out of some characters and then they just faded away towards the end. It felt like she rushed the ending, and I was disappointed by the last few pages. I love Maeve Binchy, and most of her books are some of my absolute favorite books, but this one left me hanging too much. ...more info