The Glass Lake

Bestselling novelist Binchy (Light a Penny Candle; Silver Wedding) again explores the passions and priorities of Irish women in a seductively written tale that's a bona fide page-turner. She sets this story in the small village of Lough Glass, the ``glass lake'' of the title, in Dublin and in London, animating each place more by the robust characterization of the people who live there than by the use of descriptive detail. When Kit McMahon is 12, her sad and distant mother disappears while walking along the lake. Authorities find the family's boat overturned, and, when Kit discovers a sealed letter addressed to her father, she fears that the suicide confession will keep her mother from a consecrated burial. She burns the letter, adding another burden to her misery. Helen is not dead, however. She has run off to London for great and compelling reasons, where she adopts the name Lena Gray and eventually becomes the director of an important employment agency. When Kit discovers her there years later, the anguish of both women is intensified by the complex situation, and the secret they now share eventually explodes in a way neither could have foreseen. If some aspects of the plot are contrived and the narrative overtold, the richness of Binchy's characters makes these drawbacks easy to forgive. A weeper of an ending brings this compelling saga to an unforgettable climax. (Mar.)