Maeve Binchy reveals her tough schooldays in upcoming book essay

Inner-city students land 'literary coup' with bestselling author

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In what has been described as a "literary coup" by the Irish Independent, a group of inner-city students has persuaded author Maeve Binchy to write the introduction to their book of short stories, entitled 'Yet to Be Told.'

"I would love to know what I was thinking about over half- a-century ago when I was at school. If we had been encouraged to write short stories then, which we certainly were not, I wonder what I would have written about?" asks the best-selling Irish writer.

"The topics of love and loss and uncertainty would have come up. Also the trust in friends, the fear of betrayal, the wish to belong and yet not to have your personality suffocated by others. I would definitely have written about love, very unrequited and very stumbling, and the hope that people would like me and that I would fit into some kind of race and contest which was how I saw life."

'Yet to Be Told' was written by the transition year students at Mount Carmel Secondary School in Kings Inns Street, Dublin 1.

In her introduction, Binch reveals how schoolgirls' lives have changed since she was a schoolgirl herself.

"It's not necessarily easier to be young today than it was 50 years ago. It’s very different."

"Today's young people are able to write at firsthand about the break-up of parents' marriages and the sense of bewilderment and blame that children inherit from this. Five decades ago, these things didn't happen in Ireland or, if they did, they were never acknowledged.

"Love just grew cold or turned into hate in a household. The damage was just as great to the children but slower then and not as intense. They had the cold comfort of knowing that the household would never close down.

"In a faster moving world, the fear of total change is ever present and these stories underline that very poignantly."

She goes on to describe the wide variety of stories in the book, which will be on sale in Eason's and other bookshops starting Tuesday.

The multimillion-selling author says that "life actually gets easier" as you get older.

"Everything still matters, but in a less anxious way. There is love out there and hope and friendship and a chance and a laugh and a lot to see and do.

"And that life is quite like the whole business of writing. It doesn't just happen automatically. It's out there but we have to go and look for it."

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