My first Maeve Binchy and not my last! SO glad I have finally tried her. I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf for 20 years. Ugh! So entertaining with real-life stories and characters I could totally understand, relate to, and aspire to.

I have to admit, as a book snob, I kind of look down on authors who are wildly popular. But I had heard of Binchy and, hey, "Tara Road" was in the one-for-one paperback exchange at my library's book sale, so I picked it up.

I was instantly sucked in to the characters' complex relationships, their longings, divorce and romance struggles, motivations, eforts to better themselves.

The dual stories of the two divorcees on both sides of the Atlantic who exchange homes was a great plot device. I was fascinated by the contradictions in modern Irish society -- the ethics of Catholicism still reign supreme. This, of course, includes casual philandering by all of the men and the resignation of their wives.

The protagonist's devotion to maintaining the perfect bubble of her placid home life and motherhood is shattered when her husband impregnates a young airhead. Her attempts to rebuild her life will resonate with many divorcees facing the same situation.

The implicit punishments inflicted upon Rosemary, who chooses freedom and her career over husband and children, will strike home with any woman who has made that choice. As a "Rosemary," I call myself the "eccentric spinster."

I wanted to read an Irish book while on an Irish vacation. Except that I only found this book on my second to last day of Irish vacation. So it spilled over into a "back from vacation" read. I dont know why I'm telling you this.

Listen, was this book entertaining? Yeah, somewhat. It was also a terribly big bag of rotten trash. Dude, these characters are some of the most spineless, ridiculous women in the history of literature. I wanted to scream so many times, "You've got to be kidding me!" The women in this book are unbelievable. Will no person tell what's her face that her husband is cheating on her? And are we really supposed to believe it is partly her fault that her husband has cheated (e.g. she kept the house too busy)? For real?

And dude, when you're writing an American character, you have to make her sound American! Americans don't say things like, "Aren't we magnificent?"

I can't. I'll leave you with this gem. "He had a purr like the engine of a small boat on the lakes of Upper New York State."

This is another wonderful story from Maeve Binchy. It is my favorite of hers.
It is the heartfelt tale of two women of different backgrounds, experiencing life changing drama.

Ria lives on Tara Road in Dublin,and has lived a very happy life according to her. Out of the blue her husband Danny informs her that he is leaving her and the children to live with his pregnant girlfriend.

Marilyn lives in the United States, by chance she telephones the home of Danny Lynch. She had previously met him in Ireland and knew he was into real estate. She was looking for a summer rental.
Marilyn and Ria decide to exchange homes for two months in the summer.
Each wants to escape their real lives. Ria from the devastation of her marriage and Marilyn of the loss of her child. Marilyn can’t even talk about it.

During the course of the summer secrets are revealed that neither will ever tell the other.
This is a real page turner. I highly recommend it.

Tja...ik weet het eigenlijk niet! Ik heb het boek met plezier uitgelezen, maar ik vind het wel een boekvullend iets. Het leest makkelijk en je raakt ook bijna bevriend met de personages (of juist niet) , maar het is allemaal zo uitgebreid beschreven. Het verhaal op zichzelf had met veel minder blz. ook goed geweest, dan hadden we alleen niet geweten hoe Ria iets bedacht en wat gertie dan zou doen en hoe moeder er op reageerde en enz.

I have been under the weather for a few days, and this was a perfect book for my blanket and hot tea while I nursed my cough and sore throat and headache. Ria Lynch has everything she wants in life — or so it seems — until her husband Danny confesses that he’s been seeing another woman and that she’s pregnant with his child. It’s at that point that everything falls apart for Ria, and on a whim, she decides to go the the US for a two month holiday. She trades houses with a woman named Marilyn Vine, a mother who is grieving the loss of her 16-year old son Dale following a motorcycle accident. The story is really about how everyone thinks everyone ELSE has it better, and how we all turn to our friends when we need them most. But it’s also about getting out of our comfort zones and finding ways to be happy, even when everything seems so stacked against us. Ria and Marilyn learn the “normalcies” of each other’s houses and while the former is outgoing and has a constant stream of visitors, the latter is introverted and has shut herself in her home since her son’s death. While Ria can’t save her marriage, Marilyn can, and it’s only because she ultimately learns to live a bit more like Ria. In turn, Ria learns from Marilyn — sometimes it’s okay to say no, to turn people away and enjoy the quiet and the company of just yourself. And for both of them, the love and support of family and friends is what matters most in the end. This was really just a lovely book. I enjoyed it immensely.

Only 4 stars because I despised Danny and then Rosemary and I so wanted Ria to find out all the truth, but other than that a fantastic read by Maeve, 2nd half way better than the first.

I know that I haven't even gotten to the main point (of changing houses) but I don't want to read more.

Yes, on the one hand, I am interested in what happened to the characters. Those I met so far were interesting/promising.

On the other hand, the style of storytelling gave me the feeling that I was reading the introduction (for around a hundred pages, when I gave up). Like a page or two later the story/novel would have begun, but it didn't. Then, I got the feeling it went into the melodrama spectrum. So, when Ria manipulated Danny into the second child, barefacedly lying to him (and making him the guilty one) - I had enough. It is too long a book to struggle with it.

I agree with Emma B. and stay in the minority that didn't like it much.

Still, I am going to give the author another try in the future (it was my first by Maeve Binchy).

Simple yet powerful story. Liked the way how Binchy has touched the emotions of each character.

My only issue with "Tara Road" is that it is the last Maeve Binchy novel that I have on hand, and that there are only two books by her that are left on my "to read" list. I can't say enough good things about this remarkable voice, and it is a sorrow to me that this voice is now silent.

Oh so many thoughts and feelings about this one!



So this will be full of spoilers.

Okay, so I'm about half way through this story, and I have decided to give up on it at this stage. It's not a badly written book (Binchy is too good at what she does to allow that to happen) but it is a strange, misshaped beast of a thing.

At roughly the half way point of this novel, Ria's charming husband breaks her world by announcing that he's leaving her to have a baby with a 22-year old. This should have been where the story starts. Instead, we start years and years earlier, when Ria first meets that rascal Danny. Why do we start there? You see, even though Binchy tells us what happens in all those intervening years between Ria first getting felt up by some dude at sixteen and her finding out that her husband is a louse in her late thirties, none of it really matters very much. Things happen, but nothing much changes. This is true not just of Ria (who, aside from being the connecting hub between all the wealth of side-characters Binchy introduces, performs poorly as a protagonist by being passive, meek and unimportant), but of all the characters. They are static. Consequently, you might as well start from the traditional point where stories usually start: at the inciting incident or "call to action" moment. Which, in this case, is Danny showing his true colours for the first time.

Because it is so static, the story progresses like a soap opera. Events happen to the characters, but they don't change the characters and nor are they really ever propelled by character choice or behaviour. So it feels like years are galloping past you, the reader, and with each hoof beat all you hear is "and then... and then... and then...". But as I said, it doesn't really affect the characters internally very much, so it doesn't really matter.

Binchy also chose breadth over depth, so that she touches upon what feels like a whole city of characters, but she never goes very deep. This makes a lot of them very one-note, almost like caricatures. Again, Binchy is very good at this game, and it's quite readable nevertheless, but it wears on you and it is frustrating.

Annie, Ria's daughter, is a fourteen-year-old brat. In any and every interaction with her mother, she is hostile to her. That's it.

Gertie has an abusive husband. She won't leave him, because she's not going to give up on him like all the rest of the world has. Satisfactory as an introduction to a character perhaps, but not if we follow her over decades and her stance doesn't shift one iota.

Rosamund is a beautiful career woman. She dresses well and is rich and successful but lonely. That's pretty much all you need to know about her.

The worst offender is of course Ria herself. Neither she, nor her relationship with Danny receives any deeper treatment than those side-characters I listed above. It's unclear why the charming, handsome and popular Danny decides to court Ria, since she's not described as particularly interesting or attractive as a person. In fact, one day she goes to a wedding and then she wears the red blazer she bought for that event to work, and that's when Danny notices her and that's it. They seem to share no hobbies, she pretty much just becomes his adoring yes-woman, and while this does explain why Danny would get bored of her pretty quickly, it does little to endear the reader to Ria.

Not that Danny's cheating didn't make my blood boil. Again, as I said before, Binchy knows how to write these sort of stories. But her skill notwithstanding, the emotions this evokes are only skin deep because that's how that relationship and those people are. Thin.

Unlike Circle of Friends, which is similar in its themes and even characters, this novel never develops its people as well as that novel does, and so reduces everything that happens in it to the most basic, soapy drama. And I really, really don't enjoy soaps.

Maeve Binchy covers it all; there's tales of marriage, divorce, death, love, affairs, financial loss, rebuilding lives, finding yourself and getting through it all with a positive outlook at the end.

This book took quite some time for me to get through, it's lengthy and the first half didn't really keep me super interested, when I circled back a couple weeks later and started the second half, I was hooked and had to know the ending.

There are quite a few main characters and they all have a story, which can make following along a bit tricky but I got there, and by the last few chapters, was invested in their stories.

It takes place in the 80's and 90's and it's mostly told from Dublin. There are plenty of things that make this story not as comparable to women today as it maybe would have been at that time. Ria is a devoted stay at home wife and mom that caters to her families' every need, she initially doesn't believe she's cut out for much else than cooking, socializing with her neighbors, being a mom and carrying on as a dutiful wife. That begins to change towards the end, but there were plenty of times I caught myself smirking at her words, she's 38 at the end of this and you would think she's much older with the way she speaks of herself; I'm not far off from that age and a lot of her thoughts were something I couldn't identify with, so again, its told from a different time. This coming from a person who rates Winter Wheat as one of her favorite books, I am all about things being told from a different time frame but 80's and 90's isn't THAT far off. Maybe it's a cultural thins as well...?

All in all I'd say I enjoyed it and I have looked into reading more of Binchy's novels!