This Year Will Be Different and Other Stories

By: Maeve Binchy

Narrated by: Fionnula Flanagan

Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

From the New York Times best-selling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in 15 stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings.

In "A Typical Irish Christmas", a grieving New York widower heads for a holiday in Ireland and finds an unexpected destination not just for himself, but for a father and daughter at odds.

The title story "This Year It Will Be Different" also delves into the emotions of a person at mid-life - a woman with a complacent husband and grown children who are entering a season that can forever alter her life, and theirs.

In "Pulling Together", a teacher not yet out of her 20s sees her affair with a married man at a turning point as Christmas Eve approaches - and she may be off on a new direction with some unusual friends.

And in the delightful tale "The Hard Core", the four most recalcitrant residents of a nursing home are left alone at Christmas with the owner's daughter in charge: the result is sure to be disaster - or the kind of life-affirming renewal that only the spirit of the season can bring.

The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives - step-families grappling with ex's, long-married couples faced with in-law problems, a wandering husband choosing between "the other woman" and his wife, a child caught in grown-up tugs-of-war - during the one holiday when feelings cannot be easily hidden. The time of year may be magical, imbued with meaning. But the situations are universal. And Maeve Binchy makes us care about them all. As the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, "Maeve Binchy's people come to life fully. They make you laugh and cry and disturb your sleep." They do precisely that in this extraordinary collection, on the night before Christmas when we are snug in our beds, or anywhere, any time of the year.

Please note: This is an historical recording. The audio quality represents the technology of the time when it was produced.

©1996 Maeve Binchy (P)1996 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, A Division of Random House, Inc.

Easy Christmas Entertainment

Each of the short stories have a bit of a lesson to them, and you'll find the same charming kind of characters that appear in so many of Maeve Binchy's books. Not everything is perfectly heartwarming, but that makes it more realistic.

I just wish this one were available with higher audio quality - it's only available in audio formats 1 and 2, and thus a little scratchy-sounding for those of us who use format 4. I burned cds of this to listen to in my car on a long roadtrip and it sounded horrid.

Kind of depressing but insightful

This is also a Christmas book for those of you who may not have noticed.

Terrible audio quality

The audio quality of this recording is terrible. Muffled and muddy. It made it very difficult to hear.

Poor Audio Quality

Any additional comments?

This is the first Audible book I've encountered with inferior audio quality. The narrator's voice is muffled, as though she's recording with a blanket over hear head. "S" sounds are especially sibilant and hissy. When music plays between stories, static can be heard. Voiceovers on top of the music cannot be understood. Really hard to listen to . Glad it's short.

Poor quality audio

I really wanted to hear all the stories but didn’t even make it through the first. Reminds me of how we used to play a cassette tape on one player and record with another in an attempt to make a “copy”. I don’t understand why this would even be offered given today’s audio capabilities. Don’t waste your credit.

Audio was terrible

Love the stories. Love the narrator. The sound was terrible.

Since the author has passed away, I hoped for more unabridged books to become available.

Great Stories and Narrator Lost in Bad Recording

I absolutely adore the stories and bought this so I could listen while I baked or traveled. Fionnula is a great narrator that brings life to the story but the recording sound/engineering itself is quite horrible. It sounds like it was recorded using tin cans. It is hollow, fuzzy, and muffled. I am very disappointed in the recording.

Quality of Sound

was disappointed in the quality of sound, it was scratchy and noisy which took away from the stories...

sounds like it was recorded in a phone booth

through a tin can but otherwise I love this author's works just wish the recordings were a bit better

Awful sound quality.

I couldn't hear everything and had I known it was so bad I wouldn't have purchased it. It's a pity because these are wonderful stories and the narrator is equally wonderful, but the sound quality is just terrible.