THE evening class of the title of Maeve Binchy's new novel offers more than the chance of acquiring a smattering of conversational Italian to the group of students who give up two evenings a week to travel to the bleak and scruffy Mountainview School in Dublin. The Italian lessons promise renewal, a chance to shake up their lives and make them resettle into happier patterns.
Bill, who works in a bank, sees an extra language as a way to get an international posting, and enough money to marry his daffy free spending girlfriend, Lizzie. Kathy, still a schoolgirl, is taken to the classes by her solicitous older sister, Fran, who wants the sun, moon and stars for her as well as Italian. Lou joins the class on the orders of a gangland boss, to keep an eye on some dodgy consignments which are being temporarily housed at Mountainview, but finds himself going straight under the benign influence of the evening classes.
Connie, married to a wealthy crook, joins the class in the hope of finding the boyfriend she spurned years before, while Laddy, sweet natured and slowwitted, believes that he has an invitation to go to Italy.
The begetters of the evening class are two people with wretchedly empty lives. Aidan Duane has been passed over for the heads hip of Mountainview in favour of a livelier, tougher colleague who is having an affair with Aidan's daughter. Nora O'Donoghue, known as Signora, has returned to Dublin from a long sojourn in Sicily, following the death of her married lover.
With wizardly skill and shapely plotting, Binchy brings all these characters together, along with their husbands, wives, parents, lovers and associates. Although packed to the brim with dramatic incidents - Laddy is involved in the killing of his sister's brutal husband; Kathy discovers that Fran is really her mother; Connie realises that her husband is masterminding a shameful investment scam - Binchy's fascination is with images of the ordinary world. At one point, Bill tells Lizzie that "my mother tells me she's worn out pouring tinned sauce over the frozen chicken", and his home life is revealed in that one sad sentence.
More than in her previous novels, Binchy displays a lively ambivalence towards marriage and the family. Aidan's marriage has drifted into sour apathy; his wife, Nell, one of the most unpleasant characters in the book, reads a paperback during meal times: "She gave the impression of someone wailing in an airport rather than being in the centre of her own home".
Nell is only one of many unsatisfactory mothers. Lizzie's mother is a gadabout with no time for her children; Nora's mother has never forgiven her for running off to Italy and treats her with steely harshness on her return; Connie's mother brought her up on low fat spread and no desserts so that she would stay slender enough to attract the right kind of husband.
Fathers are no better, short tempered and baffled by any show of independence by their offspring. Even decent Aidan shows a grouchy lack of understanding towards his daughter's love for the older man, who happens to be Aidan's own boss.
Yet, in spite of frequent emotional clashes, the tone of Evening Class is gossipy and good natured. Binchy, as always, treats her characters with a generous empathy and an intense affection. By the time the book closes with the group enjoying a longed for holiday in Italy, the story seems to gurgle with joy. Evening Class is a wonderfully enjoyable tale of moral evolution, guaranteed to produce a run on every Italian evening class in the country.