Tara Road [Hardcover]

One assumes that Maeve Binchy's fiction--always on the bestseller list--is sold mainly to women: the broader canvas of politics, business and legal matters don't seem to engage her interest. She's at her best in the intimate minutiae of domestic life--hopes and dreams, matters of the heart--and she's well served by her cousin Kate, who narrates her audio books with immense skill and conviction. Tara Road is in Dublin, where Ria has created an exquisite home for her adored husband Danny and her two children. Her kitchen is a warm, convivial meeting place for family and friends, but Danny seems too busy to enjoy it. To coax him back into the family circle, Ria suggests they have another baby, whereupon he confesses that he's in love with a teenage girl whom he's made pregnant, and with whom he intends to live. Realising that she's been living in a fool's paradise, Ria arranges a house exchange with a New Englander whose marriage is also on the rocks: a month in someone else's life should free them both from their misery. But the reality is more complicated, because the women have not been entirely open with each other. Skeletons emerge from cupboards, and while some characters lose out, others rise like phoenixes from the ashes of their former lives. Welcome to Binchy's variegated world. --Betty Tadman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

2 Woman - 1 Irish, 1 American - set up a home exchange business; their unlikely and touching friendship unveils secrets and changes lives.

Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and was educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and at University College Dublin. After a spell as a teacher in various girls' schools, she joined the Irish Times. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982, and since then she has written more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, each one of them bestsellers. Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably Circle of Friends and Tara Road. Maeve Binchy was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award at the British Book Awards in 1999 and the Irish PEN/A.T. Cross award in 2007. In 2010 she was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and in November 2010 she was presented with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gais Irish Book Awards by the President of Ireland, Mrs Mary McAleese. Maeve is married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell. Visit her website at www.maevebinchy.com