This Year It Will Be Different cover art

This Year It Will Be Different

Christmas stories from the world’s favourite storyteller

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This Year It Will Be Different

By: Maeve Binchy
Narrated by: Kate Binchy
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About this listen

 Stories about ordinary people going about ordinary lives will always be fascinating when told by a writer blessed with extraordinary talent, insight, and compassion.

This Year It Will Be Different brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in fifteen 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. The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives during the one holiday of the year when feelings cannot be easily hidden: step-families grappling with exes; long-married couples faced with in-law problems; a wandering husband choosing between 'the other woman' and his wife; a child caught in the grown-up tug-of-war. The time of year may be magical, imbued with personal meaning, but the situations are universal, and Maeve Binchy makes us care about them all.

Read by Kate Binchy

(p) 2007 Orion Publishing Group©2007 Maeve Binchy Anthologies & Short Stories Contemporary Family Life Genre Fiction Holidays Short Stories Marriage Magic Winter Christmas

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Critic reviews

There's nobody like Binchy for warming the cockles, and this collection of Christmas stories warms them to white heat. (Kate Saunders)
With her gift for effortless characterisation and homely detail, she evokes power shifts in families, unwelcome discoveries, conspiracies, affairs, forgiveness, sorrow and the rebirth of optimism with her usual warmth and sympathy. (Elizabeth Buchan)
Brilliant, family-oriented short stories ... Binchy fans will love it - i did! 5/5
We are all in her pages, all of us: mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, husbands, wives, children, friends, lovers ... It is this combination of Maeve's understanding of what it is to be human, and how to cope with life, that makes her so popular (Veronica Henry)
A master storyteller (Marian Keyes)
Her storytelling ability is second to none
You can see why, for a legion of female readers, Maeve Binchy is a one-woman opiate of the people
All stars
Most relevant
I enjoyed all the story in this able. Would listen to it again! Well written easy to understand! Thank you

Realy enjoyable story's

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The style of various short clips. Once I got used to it I enjoyed. thank you

love it. First time with this author and will be certainly seeking out her other work. very skillful writer

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Enjoyed all the stories and loved the narrator's voice too. Maeve Binchy never disappoints

perfect Christmas reading.

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This is really really lightweight listen. Maeve Binchy has written a group of stories which explore the myriad challenges faced by various groups of people at Christmas - ie: dinner with demanding parents, spending Christmas alone because your lover is spending it with their wife etc.

Funny in parts, poignant in others, this kept me entertained during long drives around the country. However, often the stories seemed to finish rather abruptly, leaving me overall with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.

It won't change your life, but this audiobook does help to get you in the Christmas spirit.

Gets you in the Christmas Spirit

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I remember loving this collection as a young teen, but I struggled a bit on a reread. There are some really beautiful, moving stories that are just perfect. But there's also so many about divorce, affairs and the trials of second marriages that it became a bit repetitive and depressing. I listened on audiobook and they are read beautifully by Kate Binchy.

A minor gripe (no starts deducted as it's production thing) is that the tracks on the audiobook are not with every story but every few stories, meaning it will be harder to go back and listen to the ones I really enjoyed.

Beautifully written if slightly repetitive

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