Helpful Score: 5
I keep telling myself, enough of Maeve Binchy. There's something repetitive and regular about her stories. They're long, reflect the class differences in Ireland, discuss small mindedness of small towns. There's often description of the differences between the small town and city mentality, boys vs. girls, good girls vs. âbadâ girls. She always takes a long approach â following the stories of the main characters over years of change â some change is internal, some is forced on them by outside circumstances.
Yet, I continue to read her books. There's a love of the characters, a sense that these are real people and that she's just relating their life stories. You know what to expect, sort of, but the way she writes is sweet and loving. You can get involved in people's lives â sort of watching through a one way glass â and enjoy their blessings and even their sorrows.
This is an early book â written in 1985. It is lovely, standard Maeve Binchy.
Yet, I continue to read her books. There's a love of the characters, a sense that these are real people and that she's just relating their life stories. You know what to expect, sort of, but the way she writes is sweet and loving. You can get involved in people's lives â sort of watching through a one way glass â and enjoy their blessings and even their sorrows.
This is an early book â written in 1985. It is lovely, standard Maeve Binchy.
Helpful Score: 4
A story of desolation,determination,and the hard work required to both rise above one's birth circumstances and fulfill one's destiny. The lives of Clare, Angela, and David are intertwined in the small sea side village, but there were proper ways to behave in the late 1950's and early 1960's in Ireland. The book tells what happens when each character's flaws are revealed. This was a great read!
Helpful Score: 4
Not one of Maeve Binchy's best. A slow read, and not very entertaining.
Helpful Score: 3
One of Binchy's best...love this story.
Helpful Score: 2
From Library Journal-
"This romantic melodrama, set in an Irish seaside town in the Fifties and early Sixties, is as wholesome and engaging as the author's first novel, Light a Penny Candle). Memorable characters include a poor shopkeeper's daughter who wins a university scholarship, only to miss final exams by a cruel twist of fate; a medical student who shocks his family by marrying ``beneath him''; a lonely schoolteacher who guards two scandalous secrets about her local celebrity brother; and a kindly, ubiquitous priest who knows all, tells nothing, and holds everyone together.
It's a little slow to get into, but by the halfway mark the reader is fully involved in all the subplots and is turning pages nonstop."
"This romantic melodrama, set in an Irish seaside town in the Fifties and early Sixties, is as wholesome and engaging as the author's first novel, Light a Penny Candle). Memorable characters include a poor shopkeeper's daughter who wins a university scholarship, only to miss final exams by a cruel twist of fate; a medical student who shocks his family by marrying ``beneath him''; a lonely schoolteacher who guards two scandalous secrets about her local celebrity brother; and a kindly, ubiquitous priest who knows all, tells nothing, and holds everyone together.
It's a little slow to get into, but by the halfway mark the reader is fully involved in all the subplots and is turning pages nonstop."
