Up until recently, the only book I’d read by Maeve Binchy was Circle of Friends, which I’d come to by way of the movie.  I remembered liking the book quite a bit so when I was browsing what was available to check-out on my Kindle from out library and I came across her name, I decided to take a look at another of her novels.

Minding Frankie is an excellent tale of a community coming together.  It’s sort of a slice of life of one small Dublin neighborhood, although the character of Frankie is central to the goings-on and changes that happen throughout the course of the novel.

Frankie is a baby. Specifically, she is the daughter of Noel Lynch, something he only finds out a few days before she is to be born.  Apparently, Noel had a drunken tryst with Frankie’s mother (something he doesn’t even remember), who is now in the terminal cancer ward at the local hospital. When they take Frankie from her, she will die and she wants Noel to raise his daughter. Noel is an alcoholic teetering on the edge of losing his job.

This being dropped on him is the wake-up call he needs as he tries to get his act together, with a little help from his friends.  He had withdrawn not just from the community he’d grown up in but from his family as well.  His parents are going through changes of their own as his father is dismissed from the hotel he’s spent his whole life working at.

Into this mix is a distant cousin from America, Emily, who comes to visit the Lynch’s looking for her Irish roots.  Emily has it together in many ways and becomes the first real friend Noel has ever had.  At the same time, she helps his parents see how this time of transition can also be an opportunity.

Besides the Lynch family, there is a cast of characters in this Irish neighborhood who really are characters to a degree.  Many of them have made appearances in other Binchy novels but I didn’t find that I needed to know anything about them before reading Minding Frankie.  Binchy has managed to make them that accessible.  They are quirky at times as everyone tries to support Noel, especially with a social worker named Moira nosing around all the time waiting for an excuse to remove Frankie from Noel’s custody and place her in foster care.

I read other reviews where people complained about too many characters. I thoroughly enjoyed the large canvas of characters that really made me feel immersed in this Irish neighborhood.  They were each distinctive and I could feel the closeness that one can only get from living where you see the same people day after day. They are an integral part of each other’s lives even if they don’t share the same blood.  Some of the characters start out with a lot of face-time then seem to disappear.  There are always people peripherally in our lives who might have a big moment of impact that we don’t always realize at first and who may not touch our lives again in any other way. Binchy manages to give those people a nod and really creates the feeling of a year in the life of this neighborhood as it goes through a myriad of changes.

It was also nice to read about men and women being friends without there always being sexual tension there.  Noel has a friend from class, Lisa, who moved in with him and has another relationship going. In the Hollywood version, I’m sure they would end up together but that’s not the way Binchy plays it and I think that works quite well for the story.

For those who are looking for a beginning, middle, and end with a simple story and a small cast of characters, skip Minding Frankie.  It’s a story with a large canvas of characters that are a lot of fun. I felt hopeful at the end as to what was going to happen, but nothing was cut and dried.  The characters experience many changes with this year that are detailed with charming amusement. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but understand that it’s not for everyone.