Evening Class (novel) Evening Class (novel) Evening Class is a novel by Maeve Binchy. It was adapted as the award-winning film "Italian for Beginners" (2000) by writer-director Lone Scherfig, who failed to formally acknowledge the source, although at the very end of the closing credits is the line 'with thanks to Maeve Binchy'. A story of many Irish men and women from various backgrounds and how a teacher, Nora O'Donoghue (known as "Signora"), and an Italian evening class changes their lives over the course of a year. Each chapter deals with the life story of one or more students in the class. In
The Man Who Studied Yoga quit. After missing a publishing opportunity with a "lady's magazine", Mailer conceived of an eight-novel series based on the dreams of "a small frustrated man". This series would include Sergius O'Shaugnessy, the roguish protagonist of "The Deer Park" and "The Time of Her Time", and other characters with shifting names travelling through time and "through many worlds, through pleasure, business, communism, church, working class, crime, homosexuality and mysticism". While Mailer deserted the overly-ambitious eight-novel idea, he wrote the first draft of "The Deer Park" and the 29-page abandoned prologue to it became "The Man Who Studied Yoga". Mailer credits his