Evening Class by Maeve Binchy

I think of all Maeve Binchy's books this one probably contains the highest number of improbable plot points... but this is also one of my favourites :-) The premise is that a lonely Latin teacher and an otherworldly woman (who has just spent almost three decades in a little Sicilian village pining with unrequited love for the local hotelier) set up an Italian class for adults in a run-down secondary school in a "tough" part of Dublin. Each chapter of the novel focuses on a different person involved in the class, and the novel wraps up with a trip to Italy. It's lovely (though somewhat implausible, given the size of Dublin) to see the way everyone's story is interwoven with another person's - very similar to another Maeve Binchy book, "The Copper Beech", which seems less improbable since it's set in a sleepy Irish village where you'd expect people to all know each other. Ooh, maybe I'll re-read that one next.

Other books I've read by this author:
Scarlet Feather
Tara Road