What a delicious escape! Such wonderful characters. I wanted to move onto Tara Road tomorrow! Very real but with lots of hope. A great way to see the world. Katherine Borowitz did a lovely job narrating this novel. I wish there were more of it. ( )

This has not aged well at all! It's like watching a bad 80's lifetime movie with every woman being shamed for some sexist reason. ( )

This is now the second book I have read by Maeve Binchy. The first was a shortish one about a restaurant - Quentins, which one of my sisters said was very light. She was right; it was lightweight, easy to read, a simple story that reminded me of the works of Alexander McCall Smith. I figured, when I saw this one, that I'd give it a try, that perhaps a longer book would have more depth.

In a way it does. Certainly we get to know the main character, Ria, fairly well. And we get a pretty good sense of the others. The story is about Ria and her husband Danny. Danny is the love of Ria's life. She knows that he has a way of charming everyone, and that sometimes the cheer he emanates is not quite real. He works for a developer, sells homes, and enjoys the good life. Ria and Danny started their life together in an old run-down house in a good location on Tara Road, and worked hard to improve it. In time they are living in a fine large house that suggests they are rich. Certainly they reach a point where they can do what they want.

Comes a time when Danny's boss Barney is making another deal and he needs another bit of collateral, and he asks Danny and Ria to sign over their house. Trusting Barney to make a good profit, they do so. Ria is a little concerned but hides the concern in favor of showing a united front, that she trusts Danny's judgment.

Ria is a friendly person, very neighborly and often helpful. She is in some ways "innocent", not likely to look for suspicious behavior or to believe the worst about anyone.

Thus she is shocked to find that Danny has been having an affair with a young woman, not much older than their older son. And he wants to leave Ria for her.

Ria has difficulty with the concept. Surely Danny will return to her. She fantasizes about it. At the same time, though, she recognizes that others will be giving her pitying looks if she continues her life on Tara Road, so she makes a sudden decision to get away for a few months.

This might be called Part II, as it brings another woman into Ria's house while she stays in hers in the United States. And we get to watch new relationships form. Both women are suffering from different bad events in their families. The change in location brings about changes in the women.

It is a sweet story, easy to read. Not too cloying, but a bit too "easy" for my taste. ( )

Ria y Marilyn viven separadas por miles de kilómetros: una en una acogedora y enorme mansión victoriana en Tara Road, Dublín, y la otra en un moderno loft en Nueva Inglaterra, Estados Unidos. Sería difícil encontrar una amistad más improbable.

I have been wanting to read this book forever since this book refers to characters that are in later Binchy novels. How I wish that I had stayed away from it. This book is 656 pages. Due to a nasty cold plus fever I had the past couple of days I wondered if perhaps I was being too harsh about this book. Then I re-read some passages and decided that no I was not. I think the biggest thing for me is that I cannot believe this was once upon a time selected as book as the month by Oprah Winfrey. I am also flabbergasted this became a movie as well. I am hoping the movie cut way down on the Ireland parts, but since there is no way I am going to sit through a movie based on this book I will just blissfully let that go.

“Tara Road” though it talks about two main characters is for all intents and purposes just about one, Ria. We follow her through graduating and going to work for a real estate firm where she ends up meeting her future husband, Danny Lynch. We follow Ria through I think at least 14-15 years where she is a stay at home mom, doing what she can to make her husband and children happy. That all changes when her husband informs her that he is ready to move onto someone else. When Ria realizes that her life as she knows it is coming to an end, she decides to house swap with an American woman named Marilyn Vine. Marilyn is also looking to get away from her home due to still trying to do her best to get over a tragedy.

Ria is pretty much a doormat from the beginning of this book to the end. If you expect to see any self awareness, it’s not there. Even after her husband has left her, Ria is still hoping for a reconciliation. Heck, it was maybe at the 99 percent mark she finally moved on from the guy. I initially felt sympathetic to Ria since you find out pretty soon that her husband was the worst from the very beginning. I think that is why the book doesn’t work honestly, or it didn’t work for me. You are just waiting for Ria to have her eyes opened to what her husband was getting up to. And then she does, and she still thinks he is the best thing ever. Even after all evidence points to the contrary.

Marilyn felt like an afterthought to me. She definitely has more backbone than Ria. But the two women’s friendship comes out of nowhere for me and I thought it a bit much for them to behave as if they are best friends forever at the end of the book.

Secondary characters (man there are a ton) were pretty shallow. Ria’s sister is jealous, Ria’s daughter is pretty much a brat, Ria’s son is clueless, Ria’s best friend is terrible, etc. I just felt like the book went on and on and you don’t see any growth at all except in the case of Ria’s daughter finally catching a clue. I really hated Ria’s best friend Rosemary and her other friend who was in an abusive marriage. The book just painted them in broad strokes and I really didn’t understand what I was supposed to take away from these two characters at all.

The writing was typical Binchy, but after a while my eyes started to glaze. Way too much of this book was about Ria shopping for furniture to do up her new house, wallpaper, rugs, how rooms and kitchens looked, etc.

The flow was lopsided too. Once you figure out what is going on in the book most of it was just me waiting for everyone else to catch up too.

I usually love Binchy novels. However, I realize that the earlier novels are never my cup of tea. They are way too long (this one is very long) and there always seems to be a lack of development or closure to the books. This one had a very abrupt ending and I hated that a guilty party was never confronted in the way that I thought they should have been. I read “Quentins” before and I do know that Ria ends up in that book as well, and you do hear about what becomes of her. But after reading this book and knowing what happens to her in “Quentins” I felt really dissatisfied. Probably because I think her happy ending as it is shown was pretty bogus. ( )