“A Week in Winter” by Maeve Binchy – Seven Days in Purgatory
Jean-Paul Sartre famously concluded in one of his stories, Huis Clos (No Exit), with the line “L’enfer, c’est les autres,”, which translated to English means “Hell is other people”. Naturally, it wasn’t meant to be taken in as literal a sense as the story portrayed it, but he was unto something: in most cases, our suffering comes from the actions of other men, whether direct or indirect, and being stuck together with others is one of the worst kinds of punishment one could be forced to endure. Where am I going with this? I am going to the novel titled A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy. In this novel, a woman by the name of Chicky Starr, along with the help of Rigger (a bad boy turned good handyman) and Orla (Chicky’s niece and accountant extraordinaire), decides to renovate an old and decaying mansion in the small town of Stoneybridge, turning it into a holiday house.