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Room for a Single Lady
 
 
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Room for a Single Lady (Hardcover)

by Clare Boylan (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Little, Brown (18 Sep 1997)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0316639869
  • ISBN-13: 978-0316639866
  • Product Dimensions: 24 x 16.2 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 767,376 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #10 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Boylan, Clare

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Product Description

Review

'A sharp eye for detail that makes reading Boylan's work such a pleasure' SUNDAY TIMES 'This enchanting book, so evocative of the moods and sensations of childhood has the bite of pure gold' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Witty ... beautifully written' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Boylan writes like an angel, but an angel with a knowing eye' DAILY MAIL 'Love, pain and Dickensian dottiness. As ever, Boylan is like the sun coming out.' SPEACTATOR 'An enormously entertaining and involving novel.' IRISH TIMES 'This is lemon-eyed and luscious writing, subtle, oblique, poetic, hilarious, absolutely original. But the talent for local colour, that vivid image, the quirky ear, the olfactory evocativeness, is merely how she approaches the proper concern of the top-class prose writer- an intesne and insatiable curiosity about the lives of other people.' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY 'As 1950s Dublin slowly moves away from ghastly fashions, tight perms and rigid conduct towards a brighter, freer society, Boylan's prose captures the transition perfectly.' NEW WOMAN 'Boylan has captured the harsh process of growing up- its misunderstandings and sense of irredeemably arrested development- with deadly accuracy.' TIME OUT 'Boylan spins her fable with graceful realism, and is painfully good on the horrors and resiliences of loneliness.' GUARDIAN --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

'This enchanting book, so evocative of the moods and sensations of childhood has the bite of pure gold' --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and original premise for a book, 7 Aug 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Room for a Single Lady (Paperback)
Set in Ireland. With overbearing Father out of work and overburdened Mother struggling to cope, the three daughters grapple with their teenage growing pains within the constraints of a strict sheltered upbringing.With no money for food, Father decides he will have to rent out the spare room, but only to single females, the sisters observe with fascination as a stream of lodgers follow - each with very different personalities,lives and varying amounts of influence over the three girls.The whole family become very attached to,and intertwined with some of them, and the story also follows the fortunes of some after they have gone on their way.

Father will not let go of his strict moral code throughout and his views that 'women don't work' or 'go to university' and are there to 'look after husband and home', whilst long-suffering Mother will not abandon her adamance that a woman should retain finer pursuits such as art,that keep her spirit alive.

An enjoyable gentle book about ordinary lives and struggles - written in a quaint style with a certain kind of charm and innocence.I liked it immensely.So many books do not live up to their back-cover synopses,or reviews, and leave you a little drained or depressed.This book seemed just right - being uplifting in its honesty and innocence.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Room For a Singla Lady, 7 Aug 2005
By Mrs. M. E. Cotterill "cotters" (caterham, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Room for a Single Lady (Paperback)
Loved it! I cried when I finished it as I wanted it to go on and on. A simple story of innocence in 50's Ireland but one that everyone can aquaint with whatever age they are. It tells the story of a girl and her family who have hit hard times and of the lodgers that they are forced to take in to earn money to survive. These lodgers shape their lives and their destinys. A fantastic book. I sm now going to read her others.
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3.0 out of 5 stars Ok, but nothing special, 5 Dec 2009
This review is from: Room for a Single Lady (Paperback)
I was expecting to love this book. It's a family story set in 1950s Dublin and is a sort of 'slice of life' story. It's about the Rafferty family who, to try and make ends meet when father Eugene finds himself out of work, decide to rent out their spare room. They have a number of lodgers, none of whom seem to work out for various reasons. Meanwhile, the daughters of the family, Bridie, Kitty and Rose, are growing up and are having to deal with all the issues that come with it.

Somehow for me this book didn't flow properly. I considered giving up on it several times when I was first reading it, but I decided to carry on with it and, by and large, I'm glad I did. Unfortunately, it didn't grab me nearly as much as I would have hoped, but it's still a very good bit of writing, there are some interesting and unusual characters in the story, and it did make me laugh in a few places.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars GROWING PAINS REMEMBERED
Take Dublin in the early fifties, add a family of three growing girls, mix in a procession of eccentric lodgers, whose purpose is to fend off the parents' poverty, and you have a... Read more
Published 15 months ago by B. McCanna

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