This Year It Will Be Different: And Other Stories

This collection of fifteen Christmas stories by Maeve Binchy explores contemporary life and the ways the holiday season can prompt change and new beginnings. Rather than offering nostalgia or sentimentality, the stories present truthful portraits of people during a time when emotions surface. The collection includes "A Typical Irish Christmas," in which a grieving New York widower travels to Ireland and becomes involved with a father and daughter in conflict. The title story follows a middle-aged woman with a complacent husband and grown children as she enters a season that may alter her life and theirs. "Pulling Together" depicts a young teacher navigating an affair with a married man as Christmas Eve approaches, while "The Hard Core" centers on four difficult residents of a nursing home left in charge of the owner's daughter on Christmas. The stories address various family situations: step-families managing relationships with ex-partners, long-married couples facing in-law conflicts, husbands choosing between wives and other women, and children caught between adults. Binchy's characters confront these universal situations during a holiday when feelings cannot remain hidden.