Three Great Novels: "Scarlet Feather", "Tara Road", "Evening Class" (Great Novels)

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Maeve Binchy

New from £30.16

Pages: (Audio CD)

ISBN: 0752873423

Pub: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )

Pub date: 2005-09-15

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 181843

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:

Simple and pleasant, but nothing more (3/5 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

Must for Gossip Lovers! (1/1 people found this helpful)

When I first bought this book - I expect it to be like other books but this is fanstantic ... I cannot leave this book unread! I stay in my armchair and read all the book immediately!!

Addictive Reading (3/3 people found this helpful)

Once you start to read this book - you won't be able to put it down. All fans of Maeve Binchy won't be disapointed.

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