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TARA ROAD

Name: TARA ROAD
Author: Maeve Binchy
ISBN: 0-385-31581-3

by Maeve Binchy ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 1999

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Once again, Binchy (The Glass Lake, 1995, etc.) memorably limns the lives of ordinary people caught in the traps sprung by life and loving hearts. When Danny Lynch and his young bride-to-be Ria Norris buy No. 16, a large, derelict Victorian house, Tara Road is a rundown Dublin street. Lovingly restored, the house soon becomes a gathering place as neighbors stop by to chat, help out, or eat one of Ria’s delicious meals. Ria has loved handsome Danny, a realtor who works for high-flying property tycoon Barney McCarthy, since first meeting him. She enjoys managing her busy domestic life and two children, Annie and Brian; her friends, like Gertie, whose husband beats her; Colm, who’s opened a restaurant nearby and worries about his drug-addicted sister; and Rosemary, a beautiful, unmarried businesswoman who owns one of No. 32’s new apartments. But the summer when Annie is fourteen and Brian nine, Ria learns that Danny has been dallying with a “fancy woman,” now pregnant with his child, and that he wants to marry her. Stunned, Ria impulsively accepts an American woman’s surprise telephone request to trade houses for the summer. Marilyn, living in New England, is married but still mourning the death of her teenaged son, Dale, and covets time alone. Once ensconced in her Connecticut home, Ria soon makes new friends, finds work as a caterer, and even begins dating—while also learning the truth about Dale’s death. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Ria’s pals continue to drop in, at first overwhelming Marilyn, who gradually involves herself in their lives, grows a garden, and discovers one friend’s unsuspected betrayal of Ria. The two women, each strengthened by her season abroad, meet briefly before Marilyn flies home. Grateful for one another’s support, each feels less heart-sore and more hopeful of happiness ahead. One of Binchy’s best. (Book-of-the-month main selection; author tour)

Pub Date: March 2, 1999

ISBN: 0-385-31581-3

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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A FEW OF THE GIRLS
by Maeve Binchy

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MAEVE'S TIMES
by Maeve Binchy edited by Róisín Ingle

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CHESTNUT STREET
by Maeve Binchy

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A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

by Anthony Burgess & edited by Mark Rawlinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 8, 1962

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The previous books of this author (Devil of a State, 1962; The Right to an Answer, 1961) had valid points of satire, some humor, and a contemporary view, but here the picture is all out—from a time in the future to an argot that makes such demands on the reader that no one could care less after the first two pages.

If anyone geta beyond that—this is the first person story of Alex, a teen-age hoodlum, who, in step with his times, viddies himself and the world around him without a care for law, decency, honesty; whose autobiographical language has droogies to follow his orders, wallow in his hate and murder moods, accents the vonof human hole products. Betrayed by his dictatorial demands by a policing of his violence, he is committed when an old lady dies after an attack; he kills again in prison; he submits to a new method that will destroy his criminal impulses; blameless, he is returned to a world that visits immediate retribution on him; he is, when an accidental propulsion to death does not destroy him, foisted upon society once more in his original state of sin.

What happens to Alex is terrible but it is worse for the reader.