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Heart and Soul
by Maeve Binchy

Release Date: 2nd Oct 2008
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 978 0 7528 7336 7
RRP: £18.99

Average Customer Rating: 
(0.0 based on 0 ratings)

Romance is littered throughout this jovial and multifaceted story...

Clara is a cardiologist supposedly at the top of her game, so why is it that she has ended up agreeing to a year's stint creating a new heart clinic in Dublin instead of getting that dream job in cardiology? Nothing in Clara's life seems to be as straight forward as she would like and it is with a heavy heart, but forced cheerfulness that she sets the stage for her clinic - despite the awful bureaucratic Frank Ennis.

What follows is an outpouring of how Clara's heart clinic reaches out and touches people in the most extraordinary (or perhaps the most ordinary yet wonderful) way. There is the polish immigrant worker, Ania, whose humility and devotion to hard work brings her instant friendship amongst the more "qualified" members of the team; Fiona, the headstrong nurse who is ebullient on the outside, but still nursing fears of her shortcomings; Mrs Walsh, who is frightfully cold and snooty at the outset, viewing both the clinic and its employees as minions beneath her despite the wonderful work they have done with her long-suffering husband, Bobby; Father Flynn, who manages to entangle himself with an altogether complete 'wrong-un' and in desperate need of a get-out... the list goes on.

What Heart and Soul is - is a moving portrayal of a snapshot in time of these people's lives. A time of great change, of ups and downs, deaths and births of multiple relationships, marriage and divorce, betrayal and loyalty - but most of all, it is a story of a clinic that binds people together. As Binchy springs off into another tangent where we learn more about yet another character, we feel we are being caught up in an intricate web of lives. It is a rare and satisfying look at how all our lives are interrelated somehow and how each of our own decisions can have a knock-on effect on those around us.

Bordering on the emotionally fanciful, Binchy manages to successfully keep Heart and Soul just on the right side of an over-neat fairytale where the beggar gets her prince and the bad un's turn over a new leaf. Light-hearted and wonderfully detailed without becoming cumbersome, Heart and Soul is an enchanting novel that delivers the feel good factor in spades.

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