Evening Class

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Maeve Binchy

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Pages: 528 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0752876821

Pub: Orion

Pub date: 1997-05-02

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 98259

Editorial Review:

It's the perfect gift: Laughter, the best medicine! From beloved author Maeve Binchy, who has captured the hearts of millions with her spectacular national bestsellers, including Circle of Friends and Tara Road. In Evening Class, she applies her signature warmth, wit and understanding to something new--a wickedly funny book for anyone who's checked into the hospital, headed for an operation or convalesced at home. Maeve Binchy can always be counted on to spin an involving tale about ordinary people that brings out the extraordinary in everyone. Here, she zooms in on the working-class of Dublin. Schoolteacher Aidan Dunne organises an evening class in Italian with the help of Nora O'Donoghue, an Irishwoman returning home after 26 years in Sicily. When the somewhat squashed-by-life denizens of the surrounding neighbourhood take the unexpected step of enrolling in the class, they find their lives transformed.

Binchy tells her story from the viewpoints of eight different characters and rewards both them and her readers with happy endings after the requisite rocky road. Reading a novel by Maeve Binchy is like catching up with old friends--you know everything will turn out fine in the end, but you're still interested in how things get that way.

Reader Reviews:

When you want something to read that doesn`t require much concentration (0/0 people found this helpful)

you can read this. I wouldn`t recommend it as a great read but it passes the time on shall we say....?

Very light (1/1 people found this helpful)

I usually enjoy Maeve Binchy even although her stories have no depth. You certainly don't learn anything but they are entertaining like a good soap opera. Evening class is no different although probably with even less depth than usual.

Simple and pleasant, but nothing more (4/6 people found this helpful)

I found Evening Class to be a simple, easy to read story. But it didn't go any deeper than that. This is a very pleasant book to entertain you or pass the time while you are lying on the beach or on the train to work, and don't want anything too taxing. On the other hand, that makes it highly forgettable. There is just nothing clever enough or deep enough to cause real contemplation, and as a result there is no lasting impression. The happily ever after ending was also far too expected and too obvious.

Basically, I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but when I thought about it afterwards, there was nothing special about it at all.

Pure feel good escapism. not her best but still a great read (5/5 people found this helpful)

Yet again another great book from Binchy - if not her best. Another host of different characters all looking for some diifering type of fulfilment from the Italian evening classes which bring them all closer together and manages to resolve some, if not all of their problems. The only criticism I have of this book is that the characters are a little two dimensional - a function I think of concentrating on so many different people within the space of one mid length story - there simply is not enough time. I still feel that the character and story development and degree of reality in Circle of Friends makes this book in comparison a poorer relation.

Very readable, warm and entertaining (4/4 people found this helpful)

This is a lovely book, well written and enthralling like all of Minchy's books. However it is a little unusual in that it starts off so sadly - I was in tears at the end of the 1st chapter - tears of loss for the character whose life she was describing, but I am pleased to advise that all comes well as the novel progresses. I always think a book is magnificent if it can make you laugh or cry, and this does both. It is a lovely book

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