Tara Road by Maeve Binchy

From the Timely and Timeless book discussion group on March 25, 2014.
 

Our attendance of 5 members was a bit lower than average. But we all enjoyed discussing Tara Road. We rated it at 5/5.  

 

This book had such charm and warmth. The two central characters, Ria Lynch and Marilyn Vine each faced their own emotional crisis that quite impetuously led them to swap homes for two months - one in Connecticut and the other in Dublin, Ireland. The connection was made by chance when Marilyn phoned Ria's home searching for Ria's husband, Danny, who was a realtor. This swap gave each woman an unfamiliar but none the less inviting setting that removed the comforts of their routines and allowed them to grow and experience new things and new friends.

 

Maeve Binchy was such a fine author. She died in 2012 with 22 novels to her credit, and a collection of short stories, a play, a novella and two non fiction titles. This book was published in 2000 near the middle of her writing career. It has great humanity in the two main characters and she writes about their growth and the evolution in the characters' understanding and acceptance of their worlds. There was a feeling that each brought their own personality to their new environment but both seemed to absorb parts of the other's strengths from being in the other's home. 

 

We were touched that their friends were supported in ways that showed great compassion for challenged lives while at the same time dealing with their own trials. We were repulsed by the actions of the physically and emotionally destructive characters. There were many surprises in the plot. We also appreciated that the house at 16 Tara Road was metamorphosed into a virtual character in the book. It seemed to breathe in the life of it's two different inhabitants. Every part of what went into creating a home out of this house reflected the women's passions who shared it. One created from the inside and the other from the outside. These nuances of the story kept us engaged.

 

COMING UP:

 

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani -April 22, 2014 at noon at Los Tequila

 

First published as a novelist in 2001, Ms. Trigiani grew up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. She has written and published 14 novels and has been featured in countless well read magazines including O, People, Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal. She graduated from St Mary's College in South Bend in 1981. She worked as a writer and producer on The Cosby Show and Different World in 1989 and the early 1990's.

 

The Shoemaker's Wife draws on Ms. Trigiani's Italian American roots with characters who immigrate from Italy to the US. From the Amazon.com web site is this description of the book:

 

Beloved New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani returns with the most epic and ambitious novel of her career—a breathtaking multigenerational love story that spans two continents, two World Wars, and the quest of two star-crossed lovers to find each other again. The Shoemaker's Wife is replete with the all the page-turning adventure, sumptuous detail, and heart-stopping romance that has made Adriana Trigiani, “one of the reigning queens of women’s fiction” (USA Today). Fans of Trigiani’s sweeping family dramas like Big Stone Gap and Lucia, Lucia will love her latest masterpiece, a book Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, calls “totally new and completely wonderful: a rich, sweeping epic which tells the story of the women and men who built America dream by dream.”

 

--Susan