Tara Road by Maeve Binchy

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Maeve Binchy
• Title: Tara Road
• Publisher: ‎ Delacorte Press
• Publication Date: March 1999
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover -‎ 502 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0385335121
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0385335126
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.81 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 2 x 6.5 x 9.75 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Synopsis:

With each new book, Maeve Binchy continues a remarkable progression of sales and audience growth, reaching fans of all ages and backgrounds with her matchless wit, warmth, and sheer storytelling magic.  

Tara Road, her first full-length novel since The Glass Lake, again shows her incomparable understanding of the human heart in the tale of two women, one from Ireland, one from America, who switch lives, and in doing so learn much about each other, as well as much about themselves.

Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children.  She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend.  By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband.  The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.

Drawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at first each resents the news of how well the other is getting on.  Ria seems to have become quite a hostess, entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who has always guarded her privacy.  Marilyn seems to have become bosom friends with Ria's children, as well as with Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss terribly.  At the end of the summer, the women at last meet face-to-face.  Having learned a great deal, about themselves and about each other, they find that they have become, firmly and forever, good friends.

A moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master artisan, Tara Road is Maeve Binchy at her very best–utterly beautiful, hauntingly unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable.

About the Author:

Born in a small town in Dublin County, Ireland in 1940, Maeve Binchy Snell earned a B.A, degree from University College, Dublin. She worked as a history and Latin teacher in Dublin, then as a news reporter at The Irish Times.

In the early 1980s, she published her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, using her maiden name Maeve Binchy as her pen name. She was the author of sixteen novels, many of which were international bestsellers, as well as radio dramas and television screenplays.

One of her most successful novels, A Circle of Friends, was adapted into a movie of the same title, starring Minnie Glover and Chris O'Donnell. Tara Road, another bestseller, also became a film, starring Andie McDowell and Olivia Williams.

Among the many honors she received, Binchy was awarded both the British Book and Irish Book Lifetime Achievement awards.

She died in 2012, and her last book, A Week in Winter, was published later that year.