αν η Maeve Binchy είχε γίνει μητέρα (*)

My warmest memory of her has nothing to do with books or reviewing or editing. One summer day many years ago I was driving, after lunch, somewhere in west Cork, when there appeared ahead of me, going in the same direction as I was, a large and somewhat dingy Mercedes. The car was progressing between the hedgerows at a 30-mile-an-hour weave and wallow, and from its wide-open windows there were issuing audible peals of helplessly happy laughter. I waited for a straight stretch, and, overtaking, glanced in and saw that it was, of course, Maeve and Gordon, on holiday and returning from lunch, no doubt, glorying in each other’s company, as happy as happiness itself. It is a great gift, the gift of knowing how to live; Maeve had it in abundance.

~ John Banville, Writers pay tribute to the late Maeve Binchy

 * * * * *

Do you miss out on something essential about the human condition if you eschew childbearing? Or is the pram in the hall, the enemy of promise?

Binchy, whose first novel was about a 20-year friendship between two women, didn’t need the experience of motherhood to write about love and friendship in a way that charmed millions. But she might have dug deeper, charming less but enlightening more, had she done so.

~ If Maeve Binchy had been a mother ... 

(*) θα ήταν η καλύτερη μητέρα του σύμπαντος.