What is the author's style in Light a Penny Candle by Maeve Binchy?

The book does not stray from controversial matters, including infidelity, abortion, divorce, and alcoholism, but the early chapters in which school girls wonder innocently about the mysteries of life, including religion and sex, and later laugh to discover that the nuns have been conning them. This, and the great affection that the two main characters have for one another, takes the sting out of the topics. The Irish consider the English warmongering imperialists and either atheists or pagans, while the English view the Irish drunken, ignorant idolaters. Neither bothers to investigate the validity of their prejudices or realize how the others see them.