SOURCE: “Binchy's Bumpy ‘Bus’ Ride,” in Washington Post Book World, November 7, 1991, p. C3.

In the following mixed review, Dooley asserts that Binchy lacks sympathy for the characters in The Lilac Bus.

Along the roads of Ireland are signs bearing big, black dots—a reminder to those driving by that at this spot an automobile skidded or smashed and a soul went shooting up to Heaven. Ireland is a country that keeps track of its disasters.

Disasters there have always been, adding themselves up through centuries of poverty and repressive English rule, until the people learned how to turn in on themselves, to become secretive in order to survive. Secrets, to remain such, must be held by a closed circle, and over time Ireland has become full of boundaries. These enclosures, while helping the group to endure, often have served to suffocate the individual, who learned early on that...