The Glass Lake, written by Maeve Binchy is the latest book that I have just read. The copy I have just read was borrowed from a friend purely as holiday reading matter. It was chosen mainly because at nearly 700 pages long it is a big chunky book, and I knew that it would last me all holiday. ... Read review
The Glass Lakeis a sly, seductive and compulsively readable book, perfect for rainy ... more
afternoons and late nights in bed. In the tradition of her beloved novelCircle of Friends, Irish novelist Maeve Binchey offers a wonderful old-fashioned melodrama with ...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
The Glass Lake is a sly, seductive and compulsively readable book, perfect for rainy ... more
afternoons and late nights in bed. In the tradition of her beloved novel Circle of Friends, Irish novelist Maeve Binchey offers a wonderful old-fashioned melodrama wit...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
The Glass Lake is a sly, seductive and compulsively readable book, perfect for rainy ... more
afternoons and late nights in bed. In the tradition of her beloved novel Circle of Friends, Irish novelist Maeve Binchey offers a wonderful old-fashioned melodrama wit...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
The Glass Lakeis a sly, seductive and compulsively readable book, perfect for rainy ... more
afternoons and late nights in bed. In the tradition of her beloved novelCircle of Friends, Irish novelist Maeve Binchey offers a wonderful old-fashioned melodrama with ...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Advantages: A Good Story, Very Easy To Read Disadvantages: Too Many Characters, Drawn Out In Places
The Glass Lake, written by Maeve Binchy is the latest book that I have just read. The copy I have just read was borrowed from a friend purely as holiday reading matter. It was chosen mainly because at nearly 700 pages long it is a big chunky book, and I knew that it would last me all holiday.
I must confess that prior to peeling back the first dog-eared page of this book I hadn't actually any knowledge of the Author. I did however ... ...things have progressed considerably since The Glass Lake and are continuing to do so.
Like almost all of her previous and prior works The Glass Lake is set in a small Irish Village. This particular Village is called Lough Glass, which gives the book its title. Although Lough Glass translates directly from the Irish Gaelic as the Green Lake, the lake on whose shores this tiny little Village nestles is affectionately referred to locally ... more
The Glass Lake, written by Maeve Binchy is the latest book that I have just read. The copy I have just read was borrowed from a friend purely as holiday reading matter. It was chosen mainly because at nearly 700 pages long it is a big chunky book, and I knew that it would last me all holiday.
I must confess that prior to peeling back the first dog-eared page of this book I hadn't actually any knowledge of the Author. I did however use the wonders of the Internet prior to writing this review and discovered that this was Mauve Binchy's eighth novel. This book was first published in 1994. Her most recent publication Whitethorn Woods published last year was her fourteenth novel, so it would seem that things have progressed considerably since The Glass Lake and are continuing to do so.
Like almost all of her previous and prior works The Glass Lake is set in a small Irish Village. This particular Village is called Lough Glass, which gives the book its title. Although Lough Glass translates directly from the Irish Gaelic as the Green Lake, the lake on whose shores this tiny little Village nestles is affectionately referred to locally as the Glass Lake, because its waters often shimmer like a mirror.
Kit McMahon may seem like any other child of her age, looking forward to turning thirteen and gradually becoming a woman, but deep down inside she has many worries. To the outsider she is the privileged daughter of the town's local Chemist, Martin and her beautiful mother Helen. The three of them live above the Chemist's shop with Kit's younger brother Emmet, and their housekeeper Rita.
Kit (a shortened form of her real name Kathleen) has many friends. Indeed Lough Glass is the sort of place where not only does everybody know one another, they also know everyone else's business. Her closest friend is Clio Kelly, daughter of the town's Doctor, Peter and his wife Lillian. Peter and Martin (Kit's father) are the best of friend's and it would seem almost like the whole Village is one big extended family.
However all is not well and the whispers and gossiping about Helen McMahon is rife. Kit worries about what her friends and other people in Lough Glass really think of her mother and this leads to many arguments and much bickering between Kit and Clio.
Helen McMahon is an outsider from Dublin. She has refused to conform to the ways of Lough Glass, and to participate in its gossip mongering. Instead she prefers to walk alone, night after night by the Lakeside, gathering her thoughts. There are no secrets between Helen and her husband and he knows that when she married him that she was still in love with the memory of another man, and deep down inside he knew that she always would be. He is happy however in the knowledge that Helen loves him as second best, and that he has the most beautiful wife for miles around.
One stormy night the McMahon's world is turned upside down when Helen fails to come home from one of her Lakeside walks, a boat belonging to the family is found overturned and soon it becomes obvious that Helen has drowned in the lake that she loved so much. The gossiping goes into overdrive and the whispers that Helen took her own life are quickly accepted as the logical truth. Only her husband holds onto the belief that this tragedy was nothing more than a tragic accident.
The year is 1952, this is a time when Catholicism influences every action and thought, and the most powerful and influential people in the Parish are Father Bailey, the Principal of the local Girl's School Mother Bernard, and her counterpart at the Boy's School Brother Healey. This is a time when suicide, the deliberate taking of ones own life, is considered to be one of the greatest sins against God and everyone in the Village knows the story of Bridie Daly. Bridie Daly drowned herself in the lake many years ago and when her body was dragged from the waters it was considered unfit to bury her on consecrated ground, and so her body was buried outside the Church grounds. Fearing that her mother body's would not receive a proper burial Kit takes the note left by her mother, that she finds in her father's bedroom and destroys it. Thus ensuring that an open verdict on the death is recorded and a proper burial is undertaken.
The letter that is destroyed however is a full explanation of the life of Helen McMahon, and answers every question that the gossips have ever asked or dared to think….. Why she always walked alone, for hour, after hour, so deep in thought, her thoughts and mind so far away from Lough Glass…..Why she was so keen to keep herself to herself and her life so private. …..?
Kit is convinced that destroying the letter and telling nobody about it was the right thing to do and the weeks pass by. A few weeks later Helen's body is finally recovered from the lake and her mother receives the farewell that she deserves.
From this point onwards Kit would normally be expected to grieve but the unexpected arrival of a letter from London from a mysterious friend of her mother's called Lena Gray suddenly throws Kit's life into turmoil.
The months pass by and eventually the years too and Kit goes to study at college in Dublin. From here the story flicks between Lough Glass, Dublin, and London, where Lena Gray has already established herself as the central character of the story, but who is this mysterious Lena Gray, who knows so much about Kit's mother's early life before she met her father? And why must this relationship that she has built through correspondence with Kit remain forever a secret to even her brother, father and best friend Clio?
In places this is a story that twists and turns and keeps you wanting to turn page after page. The style of writing is clear and easy to read without some of the ghastly grammatical errors that are now all too common with many modern day authors. In other parts however the story seems slow, slightly pointless and drawn out.
It would seem that everyone in Lough Glass has a secret, including even the hermit Nun, Sister Madeleine, with whom everyone confides his or her darkest sins.
The main strength of this book is in the way that the writer has built up each of the main characters in the book to a point where we start to second-guess what they will think or do next. The way in which some of the less important characters are developed is however sometimes a little irritating. For example we are told in great detail what a customer at the Employment Agency where Lena Gray works is wearing in great detail. What is the point of that?
Overall I think that this is a great story and a good read but if I am to be critical there are moments where I did find myself getting bored as there are times when we are distracted well away from the main story line.
In the Glass Lake Mauve Binchy has created not just a handful of characters but a whole fictional Village, a town with just one road. We meet and get to know the inhabitants of every house, and then we go on to meet their extended families. The story flits sometimes rather uncomfortably between these different residents at times. It is at these moments that I find my patience fading and eagerly wish for the story to revert back to Kit and the rest of the McMahon's.
I do not have any first hand knowledge of how life in a rural Irish Village during the 1950's must have been, but I feel that this is a fairly good portrayal and I presume that the Author is feeding off many of her own childhood experiences.
Like all good stories there are many twists and the biggest twist of all is left until the final few pages of the book, leaving you thinking about nothing else for the rest of the day. It was only after the book was finished that I realised that many of the characters were even more complex that I had originally given them credit for. Everything suddenly seemed to be so tidied up and finished off and so obvious, yet I hadn't the final twist coming.
Above all this is the story of Kit McMahon, growing up without the mother that she has so dearly loved and finding herself having to defend her on every corner. It is a story of faith, courage and hope, and a determination to carry out her mother's final wishes and to make something successful out of her life.
If you have the patience to read a 700-page novel and you like a story that sometimes reads like a soap opera then I would definitely recommend this book. It is good clean read, with nothing smutty, and very little bad language, the sort of thing you could quite easily lend to your mother to read.
So ?
Would I recommend this book to others? Yes Would I read it again? Possibly Would I read anything else by the same Author? Probably yes.
The Glass Lake is published by Orion Books Ltd. RRP UK £5.99
I found The Glass Lake a very enjoyable read and it was very hard to put down. It is set in Ireland in a rural village. The story focuses on the main character Kit McMahon and her relationship with her mother Helen McMahon.
Plot Summary
Helen McMahon who was very beautiful and glamourous was deserted by her lover. She then marries Martin Mcmahon and moves to a small village called Lough Glass. They had two children Kit and Emmet. She was not very ... ...restless and was hankering after the man called Louis who had broken her heart before she has married Martin McMahon..
Then one day she vanishes leaving a note address to Martin. Kit her daughter finds the note before Martin does and thinks that her Mother had committed suicide. But she had runaway to England with her previous lover Louis.
Kit found it hard growing up without her mother and with the stigma of her mother's death. They were Catholics ...
ruth1957 17.06.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy
Advantages: Thoroughly entertaining Disadvantages: You'll stay up all night to see what happens
...your usual genre preference.
The story is centred around Kit McMahon and the consequences of her mother's death when Kit was 13. It shows the relationship and understanding she has with her mother, even as a child, and the sometimes tempestuous relationship she has with her best friend Clio Kelly.
Maeve Binchy has a rare knack of really making you believe that you know the characters in the story, you get sucked in to their world and will find ... ...the ability to put herself into each very different character and make each one of them totally believable. You'll really believe that this town exists and that these people really live there.
The story draws you in from the very start - the mystery of Helen McMahon, who on paper should be very content but realistically is restless and unhappy. She makes a decision that will have a profound effect on a lot of people's lives and then has to live ...
jaryan04 29.06.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy
Advantages: very absorbing, beautifully written, very descriptive Disadvantages: like all good things, it comes to an end - but a great ending.
...ago, for a holiday in the sun with my galpals - needless to say I pretty much ignored them the first few days, whilst I was totally absorbed in this book, and then they ignored me as they all borrowed it too!. I'd only ever read one of the authors books before this, so it was a lovely surprise how well her style and descriptions sat with me, and overwhelmed me.
The story is centred around a young girl, Mary Katherine McMahon (or Kit for short) and ... ...a small irish town. The early pages describe Kit, her family, the town and people where she lives, and develop many of the characters beautifully, including her bossy friend Cliona, her gorgeous little brother Emmett and her mother Helen. They live in Lough Glass, a town around the shores of a lake nicknamed the glass lake. At the start of the novel, Kit is really worried about her mother, as she is acting very strangely..
One dreadful night, Kit's ...
deeleybopper 04.07.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy
Advantages: easy reading, doesn't require too much concentration Disadvantages: thick and heavy
...as good as some of the author's earlier books, i.e echoes, light a penny candle. However, I couldn't have turned out to be more wrong. With Maeve Binchy's wit and humour, this is a really good read. It is about the trials and errors of a young girl and her close knit friends and family. The storyline is great and it's one of those books where the saying 'expect the unexpected' is extremely relevant.
I would say the only danger in reading it is that ...
HelsBelsWins 04.07.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy
Advantages: Contains every emotion, long lovely read Disadvantages: None
...15. I had forgotten the story after so many years and having read all of Binchy's novels I decided to start on them again. This book is just wonderful. The story centres on Kit, a young girl from Lake Glass in Ireland. I'll try not to give away the whole story but in summary:
When Kit is 12 her mother, Helen, disappears, and is presumed by everyone to be drowned in the lake. You find out pretty quickly that she didn't drown at all but that her one ... ...tell him this, but by the time the note is found, by Kit, Helen is already presumed to be in the lake. Kit therefore burns the note, fearing a suicide would mean her mother would be burried outside the churchyard. When a body is found the case is closed for the family in Ireland. However, when Helen learns of her 'death' from London, she begins to write to Kit, under the guise of Helen's friend. The story then tells how they correspond until Kit ...
tartlette83 21.02.2006 (13.03.2006)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy
Centering arond the MacMahon family, a tragic, touching, tangled story of love set in typical Binchy type town in Ireland,this is the best so far from this successful writer.
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