Open-Handed

by Chris Binchy

The place is Dublin. The time is the present. Five characters - two Irish, three from eastern Europe, all seeking success from wildly different starting points - become entangled with one another in a web of politics, property, sex and violence. Chris Binchy's novel is a beautifully observed portrait of a place and a time, and a thrillingly paced story of an unforgettable group of characters brought together by circumstance, ambition and need.

Genres: Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2008

About the author

Chris Binchy is the author of People Like Us, Open-handed, and The Very Man, which was short-listed for the Irish Novel of the Year Award. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. His aunt was author Maeve Binchy.

Reviews

[Jennifer O'Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this while I was doing a creative writing workshop with Chris Binchy, so that might have skewed my judgement, but I really enjoyed it. A tense, pacy novel set smack bang in the middle of Celtic Tiger Dublin, and featuring the interlinking stories of the ill-fated love affair between a violent bouncer and a Polish night club hostess, and the unravelling life of a grubby little councillor who could have been lifted straight from the pages of the Mahon Tribunal report. The picture it paints of Dublin isn't a flattering one - it's all soulless hotels and sprawling housing estates; grim nightclubs; underground prostitution; corrupt politicians and dodgy property deals - but it's a fairly accurate one. Chris (as I would have expected) recreates this world with exquisite attention to detail and just enough humanity.