Heart and Soul

By: Maeve Binchy

Narrated by: Sile Bermingham

Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2009 Maeve Binchy (P)2009 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Interweaving the domestic narratives of a dissimilar collection of individuals is beloved Binchy's stock-in-trade, and once again, she does so with sublime ease, inventively engaging readers through a reassuring and persuasive combination of gracious warmth, gentle humor, and genuine affection." ( Booklist)

Narrator driving me crazy

One of the main characters has a very annoying accent and little girl voice. Two more sound like alien robots. Very distracting

Very warm

another winner makes you feel like you are there. you also feel you know the people. Enjoyable.

Robot children

I enjoy the storyline Of Heart and Soul. It brings in lots of previous storylines and characters from other Binchy books. As always, BINCHY does a great job of introducing us to new characters and getting into their hearts. She wraps up the story nicely. The reader does a good job generally in her reading, but she does some odd timing, occasionally. She takes the “odd children" Maud and Simon and gives them robotic voices. In the Scarlet Feather uses dialogue to show their oddities. In this particular book, Binchy doesn’t show the oddities through characterization. Maybe that is why the narrator decided to make them sound robotic. Very weird. Other than that, it’s a good book.

Odd narration

Another wonderful book by Maeve Binchy! Unfortunately, the narration was odd. There are two characters, the twins Maude and Simon, and their voices were spoken like robots. It was very distracting.

Sorry Meave

I am a BIG Maeve Binchy fan, but this one is dreadful - there are way too many characters, the story is disjointed, some characters are never developed and it goes no-where. Maeve - what were you thinking? By-pass this one is my recommendation. Sorry Maeve.

Don't waste your time with this one. TERRIBLE.

I never thought that I'd find a Maeve Binchy that I didn't like. Never say never. Sile Bermingham is absolutely terrible. I will avoid her in the future.

too many characters

I love Maeve Binchy books and how she is able to take a few (6 to 8?) random characters and interweave their lives. This book would have been great if she hadn't felt the need to rachet up the number of characters to 15 (or so). I was enjoying the book til midway a whole new cast was introduced with a story of their own and it was quite a while before the original people returned to the story. And then she referred back to characters from another book (luckily I had just read "Nights of the Rain and Stars") and briefly included them in this story without describing who they were (Tom and Elsa especially). And does everyone really need to be paired up?

It was a nice story but too neatly tied up and desperately in need of an editor.

Terrible narration choices were made!!

this should have been an easy and charming book to listen to. Sile Bermingham, however, ruined it for me.

First of all, puzzlingly, she reads in an American accent for all the Irish characters.

Much worse than that is her "Polish" accent which is so stilted, incorrect and just UGLY that I found it impossible to listen to. Also a pair of twins show up that talk exactly like robots! Why???

I turned it off after a few hours. I couldn't keep on having my ears assaulted. it's too bad...

Boring Binchy

there was absolutely no plot to this book whatsoever--just a bunch of random characters' stories woven around a thin location. Long, rambling stories that lead you no where. Very disjointed, I got confused in the middle of the novel when it diverts to some hackneyed story about a priest. All of the characters' issues wrap up too neatly and it makes Dublin look like Hayseed, Iowa. If I was Irish, I'd be a bit offended by this quaint village show she puts on. I liked her other novels but this one just DRAGGED.

Distracting reader

The narrator lisps. If you can tolerate "s" being pronounced "th", go for it.