Há muito tempo que não lia um livro deste tipo. É o que considero livro de família. São livros que nos trazem a história de uma família, que nos vão mostrando a forma como a dinâmica da família se desenrola ao longo do tempo.

Neste caso a história está mais focada em Ria e é através da sua história que as histórias da sua família e dos seus amigos serão narradas. A Marylin aparece já a metade do livro passou. A história da Ria foi-nos contada e estamos no momento presente. É aí que a Marylin aparece. A história de Ria vamos vendo acontecer, a história da Marylin é-nos contada para percebermos o presente. São perspectivas diferentes.

Não obstante este pequeno pormenor, que verdadeiramente não tem nada a ver com o livro apenas com a publicidade à volta dele, o livro é muito, muito bom.

Maeve Binchy ganhou mais uma fã. Tem uma escrita muito clara, sem floreados, mas muito assertiva. A história é bem contada. Gostei particularmente da forma como intercala dois episódios grandes com outros pequenos que apenas servem para nos ir situando do que se passa paralelamente aos que nos está a contar. É como se fossem janelas muito breves para tomarmos conhecimento das sinuosas curvas da história. Por vezes um diálogo de três falas serve para nos inteirar de um facto, sem grandes demoras de descrição ou narração. Francamente, gostei desta opção da autora. Assim como gostei que a autora nos tivesse dado, através dessas janelas, a indicação de um acontecimento que não concretiza e que até ao fim não desvenda inteiramente. Aliás, nunca chega a desvendar, muito embora nos faça supor, através de outro acontecimento, a forma como se desvendaria. Muito bom!

A trama é também boa. Não muito densa, mas também não é totalmente clara. Vai sendo descoberta. Aos pouco vão sendo retirados os véus e vamos conhecendo mais e mais e mais. Maeve consegue manter o leitor interessado e sempre muito agarrado à história. Recomendo.

What books do you read when you’re sick? Are they different from your normal picks?
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This week, I’m 95% sure I had influenza. I haven’t felt this sick in years. There were a few days I couldn’t even get out of bed, let alone read. But before and after the worst days, Tara Road kept me company.
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Honestly, I am not sure I’d have stuck with this book if I wasn’t sick. I don’t normally go for decades-long family dramas. But her witty dialogue, brief sections, and engaging story line were just what my sick head needed. I was completely drawn into the world of the big old house on Tara Road, which felt as much a character as anyone else: witness to joy, sorrow, betrayal and redemption over the years.
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And now I can finally say, I’ve read Tara Road, AND check it off for this month’s challenge for #theunreadshelfproject2019 - maybe a few days in bed was just what I needed.

Mauve Binchy makes my stomach hurt.(I stopped after one.) I hate reading about infidelity and this one book includes infidelity with a wife's best friend. Ugh.

I’m thinking “everyday, real life stuff” and “good story” and is it too much to say that this kind of book also brings to mind Stegner’s Crossing to Safety in some ways? Definitely the type of novel that has staying power.

My mom and sister and I refer to this as the "smell the milk" book. Sometimes you open the fridge and wonder what that horrible smell is, and you open the milk bottle and nearly pass out. But it's so bad someone else HAS to experience it to, so you ask whoever's nearby to smell the milk, too.

I picked this book up in a grocery store in Shannon, Ireland. I was hoping for a fun, light read during my vacation. It *was* fun and sort of light, but not in the way I expected.

I've truly enjoyed some of Ms. Binchy's other novels - especially Circle of Friends - but this one? Oh, the badness. Binchy skipped right over "cozy chicklit" and went straight to "soap opera drama". The characters didn't talk or act like real people. Ridiculous characters and events were thrown in like Binchy was cleaning out her fridge and making soup with the contents.

I finished it before the trip ended, so my mom decided to read the book on the flight home. She'd read passages out loud to me and we'd laugh. Later, I told my sister about how awful it was, (she loves Binchy's earlier work, too) and she had to read to see just how bad it was.

Honestly, I'd give it zero stars, but I got a lot of entertainment out of this book, and it remains on my bookshelf as a testimony to fun conversations with my family. Tara Road gets two stars for making me laugh.

Couldn’t put this book down. I love this author. I’ve read just about everything she wrote and now am starting to re read them all. It’s like meeting old friends and catching up!!

I have been wanting to read this book forever since this book refers to characters that are in later Binchy novels. How I wish that I had stayed away from it. This book is 656 pages. Due to a nasty cold plus fever I had the past couple of days I wondered if perhaps I was being too harsh about this book. Then I re-read some passages and decided that no I was not. I think the biggest thing for me is that I cannot believe this was once upon a time selected as book as the month by Oprah Winfrey. I am also flabbergasted this became a movie as well. I am hoping the movie cut way down on the Ireland parts, but since there is no way I am going to sit through a movie based on this book I will just blissfully let that go.

“Tara Road” though it talks about two main characters is for all intents and purposes just about one, Ria. We follow her through graduating and going to work for a real estate firm where she ends up meeting her future husband, Danny Lynch. We follow Ria through I think at least 14-15 years where she is a stay at home mom, doing what she can to make her husband and children happy. That all changes when her husband informs her that he is ready to move onto someone else. When Ria realizes that her life as she knows it is coming to an end, she decides to house swap with an American woman named Marilyn Vine. Marilyn is also looking to get away from her home due to still trying to do her best to get over a tragedy.

Ria is pretty much a doormat from the beginning of this book to the end. If you expect to see any self awareness, it’s not there. Even after her husband has left her, Ria is still hoping for a reconciliation. Heck, it was maybe at the 99 percent mark she finally moved on from the guy. I initially felt sympathetic to Ria since you find out pretty soon that her husband was the worst from the very beginning. I think that is why the book doesn’t work honestly, or it didn’t work for me. You are just waiting for Ria to have her eyes opened to what her husband was getting up to. And then she does, and she still thinks he is the best thing ever. Even after all evidence points to the contrary.

Marilyn felt like an afterthought to me. She definitely has more backbone than Ria. But the two women’s friendship comes out of nowhere for me and I thought it a bit much for them to behave as if they are best friends forever at the end of the book.

Secondary characters (man there are a ton) were pretty shallow. Ria’s sister is jealous, Ria’s daughter is pretty much a brat, Ria’s son is clueless, Ria’s best friend is terrible, etc. I just felt like the book went on and on and you don’t see any growth at all except in the case of Ria’s daughter finally catching a clue. I really hated Ria’s best friend Rosemary and her other friend who was in an abusive marriage. The book just painted them in broad strokes and I really didn’t understand what I was supposed to take away from these two characters at all.

The writing was typical Binchy, but after a while my eyes started to glaze. Way too much of this book was about Ria shopping for furniture to do up her new house, wallpaper, rugs, how rooms and kitchens looked, etc.

The flow was lopsided too. Once you figure out what is going on in the book most of it was just me waiting for everyone else to catch up too.

I usually love Binchy novels. However, I realize that the earlier novels are never my cup of tea. They are way too long (this one is very long) and there always seems to be a lack of development or closure to the books. This one had a very abrupt ending and I hated that a guilty party was never confronted in the way that I thought they should have been. I read “Quentins” before and I do know that Ria ends up in that book as well, and you do hear about what becomes of her. But after reading this book and knowing what happens to her in “Quentins” I felt really dissatisfied. Probably because I think her happy ending as it is shown was pretty bogus.

I’ve been trying for years to think of the title of this book yay. I found it. This is one of the best I’ve read. It was many years ago.
You will love this. I’m going to buy this and read it again. Soooooo good!

Ria lives in Dublin, Ireland, in a beautiful, Victorian house surrounded by loving family and friends. She has great kids and is happily married -or at least she thinks so- to hotshot estate agent, Danny Lynch. But the day comes when Danny suddenly drops a bomb onto Ria's happily-ever-after. He is leaving her for a young girl, whom he also got pregnant. Ria's world is completely shattered and she does not really know how to cope with it all, when a chance phone call from America starts her on an unexpected journey.

The caller is Marilyn Vine, from New England, who wants to visit Ireland and is in need of accommodation. She is eager to escape her home where memories seems to suffocate her. Her only, teenage, son died in a motor crash and she is unable to forgive herself or even to communicate about it with anyone.

On an impulse the two women agree to swap houses for the summer setting a series of events into motion that none of them can foresee and that will change their lives forever.

Tara Road has all the elements that make stories by Maeve Binchy an ultimate, heart-warming reading experience

She wrote about people to people with so much sympathy, understanding and acceptance of the human heart and mind that never ceases to amaze and delight me.
She also perfectly knew -while acknowledging and writing about all that sadness and unhappiness that people cause by letting each other down all the time- that there is a need for stories that turn out well or where there is at least hope for the future. And she did write them all right. Tara Road, Circle of Friends, Scarlet Feather, The Glass Lake Evening Class or Quentins are all there to prove it.
All of them are highly recommended.

I read this years ago. I know she's a firm favourite of many people and I seem to recall that it was okay, but it obviously didn't make enough of an impression for me to read any more.

A very good read! My first of Maeve Binchy, and I'll read more.

En tegelsten men så bra att jag inte kunde sluta läsa. Omläsning av en PAN pocket från 2000.