... Everybody knows each other's business in Tara Road. These two women swap houses and friends for two months with some very interesting consequences.
If you want to know the outcome you will have to read the book. Don't you just hate it when someone tells you the ending !!... Read review
Amazon.com Oprah Book Club(r) Selection, September 1999: Against all odds, two newlyweds ... more
manage to buy the house of their dreams. In 1982, property speculation is beginning to be a big, big thing in Dublin--and their street is very much in an up-and-co...
Postage & Packaging: refer to website Availability: Check Site.
Amazon.com Oprah Book Club(r) Selection, September 1999: Against all odds, two newlyweds ... more
manage to buy the house of their dreams. In 1982, property speculation is beginning to be a big, big thing in Dublin--and their street is very much in an up-and-co...
Postage & Packaging: refer to website Availability: Check Site.
Amazon.com Oprah Book Club(r) Selection, September 1999: Against all odds, two newlyweds ... more
manage to buy the house of their dreams. In 1982, property speculation is beginning to be a big, big thing in Dublin--and their street is very much in an up-and-co...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Amazon.com Oprah Book Club(r) Selection, September 1999: Against all odds, two newlyweds ... more
manage to buy the house of their dreams. In 1982, property speculation is beginning to be a big, big thing in Dublin--and their street is very much in an up-and-co...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Amazon.com Oprah Book Club(r) Selection, September 1999: Against all odds, two newlyweds ... more
manage to buy the house of their dreams. In 1982, property speculation is beginning to be a big, big thing in Dublin--and their street is very much in an up-and-co...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
It's the perfect gift: Laughter, the best medicine! From beloved author Maeve Binchy, who ... more
has captured the hearts of millions with her spectacular national bestsellers, including Circle of Friends and Tara Road. In Evening Class, she applies her signature warmth, wit and understanding to something new--a wickedly funny book for anyone who's checked into the hospital, headed for an operation or convalesced at home. Maeve Binchy can always be counted on to spin an involving tale about ordinary people that brings out the extraordinary in everyone. Here, she zooms in on the working-class of Dublin. Schoolteacher Aidan Dunne organises an evening class in Italian with the help of Nora O'Donoghue, an Irishwoman returning home after 26 years in Sicily. When the somewhat squashed-by-life denizens of the surrounding neighbourhood take the unexpected step of enrolling in the class, they find their lives transformed. Binchy tells her story from the viewpoints of eight different characters and rewards both them and her readers with happy endings after the requisite rocky road. Reading a novel by Maeve Binchy is like catching up with old friends--you know everything will turn out fine in the end, but you're still interested in how things get that way.
Postage & Packaging:refer to website Availability:Check Site.
Advantages: Very gripping, unable to put down Disadvantages: None
...each other's business in Tara Road. These two women swap houses and friends for two months with some very interesting consequences.
If you want to know the outcome you will have to read the book. Don't you just hate it when someone tells you the ending !! ... more
This is another of those great books by the Irish Author Maeve Binchy. I am a seasoned reader and must say that I always look forward to one of her new releases since they never fail to please.
The story starts with Ria and her family including her charming husband Danny Lynch. Ria is the homely wife who some call pretty but never beautiful. Her best friend however, can have any man because she is just so striking as well as being a successful business woman. There are a variety of other background characters such as Gertie who cleans Ria's house so that she can provide her husband with drinking money. Colm who owns the local restaurant and uses Ria's garden for growing his vegetables and Barney McCarthy, Danny's dodgy associate who has been having a long term affair.
As is usual with Maeve Binchy all these characters have great depth and interact with each other on a regular basis. They all seem to be living a wonderfully happy life until Danny tells Ria that he is leaving her for a slip of a girl that he has got pregnant !
Ria discovers that there are also financial worries that have been kept hidden from her and through a chance phone call from an American woman, she decides to opt for a house exchange. The American, Marilyn is used to privacy and peace, her neighbours are not encouraged to intrude. Ria has enough visitors to be classed a railway station in her own right. Everybody knows each other's business in Tara Road. These two women swap houses and friends for two months with some very interesting consequences.
If you want to know the outcome you will have to read the book. Don't you just hate it when someone tells you the ending !!
Advantages: involving read Disadvantages: not sure she writes about America as well as she does Ireland
We are introduced to a whole wealth of characters in this book, which is wonderful because Binchy does characters very well. She also manages to successfully cover over 2 decades in the space of this novel, which is no mean feat. The only downside of this is perhaps that we know our Irish characters much better than our American ones. While this adds a sense of mystery and tension in the story, it doesn't allow us to empathise with the Americans ... ...hopes of a newly married couple who manage to buy a large beautiful house on the cheap (I wish I had their luck!) and build up their life before it suddenly falls to pieces. I was disappointed by Binchy's writing of the main male character Danny, who seems to become a "bad man" merely to serve the needs of the plot. However, the female characters more than make up for this as does the naive wit of youngest son Brian.
The relationship between parents ...
emmalily 14.04.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Tara Road - Maeve Binchy
Advantages: Hard to put down Disadvantages: Hard to put down!
Having read two of Maeve Binchy’s other books, “Light a Penny Candle” and “The Copper Beech”, that I didn’t really enjoy I wasn’t going to be tempted when I saw “Tara Road” at my local newsagents. But I love reading and I was desperate for a good read and it was the best of a lousy selection, along with one other. (but more about that another time…) So, I “paid my money and took my ... ...me for the next two evenings, I couldn’t put that book down, I was engrossed! In my opinion it is different to the other two of hers that I have read, I can’t put my finger on why, It just is.
It basically revolves around two main characters, Ria and Marilyn who live opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It is about their loves, lives etc. One day they decided to swap homes for the Summer and as a result kinda swap lives to some extent. ...
kazziebears 22.04.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Tara Road - Maeve Binchy
Advantages: You completely lose yourself Disadvantages: I couldn't get anything done until I finished the book
This is the first book by Maeve Binchy that I have read, I've heard of her before but never thought to buy one of her books. Not that I even had to this time, my mum came to visit and brought it with her telling me that "I just had to read it!", since I've had it I haven't shut it until it was finished.
This book is amazing, you lose yourself in the lives of all of them, especially Ria (the main character), and Marylin the American with whom she ... ...Ria lives at home, and is working at an estate agents. She becomes friends with a girl who already works there called Rosemary, who is stunning, compared to Ria who is pretty but not beutiful.
Not long after she starts, a man called Danny starts, and for Ria it's love at first site. You follow them through their journey of buying a house, getting married, having children and building their life together. On the outside it is a picture of perfect ...
becky93 24.03.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Tara Road - Maeve Binchy
This is a very absorbing light novel expanding over 2 decades of a families life. It is a story of love,deceit,friendship and courage.
It is about two women one is from Ireland and the other is from America.They trade houses but do not meet.
The book centres on the life of Ria Lynch in Ireland who is very happily married to Danny Lynch. They settle down down and had a family and life was very good. Danny's career had taken off so financally they ... ...long time Danny starts to spend more time away from home and his family.
So because of Danny's unfaithfulness Ria decides to switch homes with the lady from America. It goes through the women's lives and experiences their highs and lows.
I found that once I started I just could not put it down so housework got abondoned . If you are looking for a Holiday read this could be the book you are looking for. ...
ruth1957 18.06.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Tara Road - Maeve Binchy
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Advantages: If you are going to uni soon Disadvantages: beginning and film can put you off
I bought the book Circle of Friends after I had read TaraRoad, also by MaeveBinchy, I was recommended this author and I must say she is fantastic. I must admit I found the beginning a little hard to get into so don't let that put you off reading this book, as soon as the main character Benny goes to uni it really starts to get good. This book is about 2 best friends, Benny is decribed as fat and unattractive but she has a loving family who make her travel home every night on the bus from uni, this causes problems, the other one is called Eve, she is slim and an orphan who is brought up by nuns in a convent, she lives with a lady who's son died before having gone to uni. I have also just watched the film and that wasn't good especially compared to the book, watching that film would have put me off. The book is good because although ...
Advantages: Warmth, complexity, and insights into life in moderrn Ireland Disadvantages: Somewhat predictable
[Note: This review disclosures key plot elements.]
For MaeveBinchy fans who fell in love with TaraRoad, Scarlett Feather, or Evening Class, Quentins represents a return to familiar territory. Indeed, one wonders if the theme pursued in this novel--that of documenting the history of modern Dublin as seen through the lives of customers and staff at a popular restaurant--isn't an apt paradigm for what Binchy has done with this whole series of Dublin-based novels.
Like other books by Binchy, Quentins is better than your average "romance" fiction. The characters are stronger and more fully formed. The situations more truly reflect life in modern Ireland--indeed, modern life in general. The plots are more complex. And, unlike Nora Roberts, Binchy manages to resist the temptation to fill her Irish fiction with fairies and other ...
Advantages: Pleasant light reading, some great characters, satisfactory ending Disadvantages: Rather convoluted plot, too many minor characters, some a bit flat
, Cathy, and the twins Maud and Simon, from 'Scarlet Feather'. I found this to be a pleasant touch: they were likeable characters, and it felt a bit like catching up on news of old friends. However for someone who has not read 'Scarlet Feather', I think this could add extra complexity, and possibly some confusion. The twins, in particular, provide a little light relief in their endless questioning and naiveté, but don't really fit all that well with the general plot of the book, and might seem extraneous to someone who had not previously met them.
* Setting *
As with many of MaeveBinchy's books, this is mostly set in Dublin; indeed she takes the setting of another of her previous books, 'TaraRoad', for Ella's parents' home. She writes confidently without an excess of detail about the surroundings, building up a realistic picture ...
