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
Middlesex (novel) of Texas at Arlington, wrote that the novel was "the latest in a long line of contenders for the status of Great American Novel", and compared Cal to Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of "Invisible Man", and J. Sutter in "John Henry Days". Alexander Linklater of the "Evening Standard" commented that American publishers chose "Middlesex" as the next Great American Novel to generate progress for American fiction and that Eugenides is considered the "next stepping stone along from Jonathan Franzen". Dan Cryer of "Newsday" wrote that with the publication of "Middlesex", "[f]inally, Detroit has its very own great American novel". David