Rating: 
Summary: Terrific Book!
Review: This was the first book I read by this author. My interest in it at first was the Irish setting (I am Irish). Once I started the book, I could not put it down! This novel has a good mix of mystery, romance, and a sense of Ireland. It is a terrific work and led me to others by this author!
Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: This is my first Binchy novel and enjoyed it throughly to the end. I'm wondering if all her books are wonderfully told stories as this. I will soon find out.
Rating: 
Summary: Oops...the revelations that quicken the pace
Review: Once again, along with many other readers, I have to agree and point out that Binchy's characters and ability for story line are absolutely amazing. The Glass Lake was a story that you just get wrapped up in. Being from a small town myself, it's very easy to think her story possible. My major complaint in comparison to her other novels is that the ended just gets too rushed. It's like she looked at the bottom of her word processing program that said "Page 700" and then said:
"Oh, Gosh! This is long! I better finish it while it's still a sellable length!". In about five pages you have Kit seduce Stevie AND fall in love with him, I mean COME ON! It's just a little too melodramatic after working so hard to make an unbelievable story rather realistic. I think my advice to Binchy would be that the next time you see 700 pages, just realize that it's ALREADY long, another 50 pages to keep true to your wonderful characters and explainations is not going to offend the readers any.
Rating:
Summary: Runaway moms and the daughters who love them
Review: This fast paced book kept me reading in to the wee hours of the morning. Although I've never been to Ireland, Binchy paints such a vivid picture of her homeland that I feel like I've been there. Her characters were warm and realistic, and although the book was long I wanted it to keep going.... Another in a long line of great books by Maeve Binchy.
Rating:
Summary: Better than a Harlequin novel...
Review: This book made me want to pick up and run away to Ireland. Maeve Binchy has inticed her readers, or at least this one, to travel to this magic country one day. I liked the style with which she used...pinning a mother's romantic side versus her daughter's practical nature. These roles tend to be reversed in storytelling today. Anyone who has ever fantasied about running away from it all will find a friend in The Glass Lake. Lena Gray is the woman I wish I could be. She is gutsy without overdoing it. Binchy has made a charater that I could read about many times over.
This book is for the romantic dreamer in us all. If only I could close my eyes and find myself in Lough Glass....
Rating:
Summary: Perfect!
Review: Reading The Glass Lake gives you the enchanting feeling of being being a part of the characters the little Irish town. Maeve Binchy skillfully envelopes the reader in the lives of the people in Lough Glass.
This is a tale of a simple town that were filled with many dark secrets, starry dreams, wild gossips... A story that has something unexpected in stored at every bend... A story about life.
This is a must for all Binchy fans. And even if you are not, give yourself another chance...or you'll never forgive yourself for not seizing the opportunity to live in this lovely town by the lake...
Rating:
Summary: It takes a second reading to catch the true depth
Review: As an avid reader of Maeve Binchy's work, I would give the Glass Lake the top rating. However, its depth will not be apparent if it is read as a romance or mystery. The key is relationships, individuality, and the complexity of human nature.
The plot has rather unlikely twists, and the premises don't always ring true. The key points that I mentioned, however, more than compensate.
The characters of Helena and, to a great degree, Sister Madeleine, are at once puzzling, multi-dimensional, an interesting combination of worldly and naive, and refreshingly unconventional. Both are mystery women, in very different ways, but their parralel is in being able to live outside the norms.
It's interesting that the elegant Helena, who delights in beauty and fashion and longs for travels, is perfectly willing to forego material wealth in order to be with the love of her life. Like Madeleine, she will not have possessions tie her down. But Helena, who presumably married Martin solely for security, confuses the need for a career and freedom with the far more pressing need to be with the man she truly loves.
My humourous side cannot ignore another parallel between Helena and Madeleine - in fact, one that few readers might catch. Once both chose to embark on another way of life, the circumstances were a bit too perfect. Though it was not unheard of for lone rangers to fit into parish life (and be supported in their modest lives) forty years ago, Madeleine's being able to appear out of nowhere, her past extremely vague, and set herself up in a conveniently empty cottage, supported by those who come to her for advice ... is highly unlikely.
Poor though Helena's accommodations are when she moves to London, her being able to find a place to live directly upon arrival seems remarkably providential.
Lena's first encounter at Millar's is so fantastic that it is stranger than Sister Madeleine's situation! Scores of applicants, with far stronger skills and backgrounds, would have come through that door each week, and help would have been hired well before had there been the need. (Considering that we're told that business was poor, hiring another staff member seems beyond unlikely.) There never has been anyone in the history of the world who can transform any business just by bursts of intuition. Here, one totally inexperienced turns a second rate employment agency into a thriving showplace that receives media attention and makes her very wealthy. Her few suggestions about Louis's workplace transform the hotel, and this despite it's being a hot spot with extensive staff.
Yes, our Lena is truly extraordinary, and always knows the right thing to do. A few sentences from her free Jessie of the burdens of caring for an elderly mother. Small doses of Lena's wisdom (aided by a few visits to a hairdresser) lead Jessie and Mr Millar to marry, since it's already turned a plain Jane into a smart lady, and also result in Ivy's marrying the man she's loved on the sly for years.
It seems that, except in her choice of lover (and we don't know that until the end), Lena can do no wrong. She needs no training, no experience, no education - she magically always knows the formula. Equally incredible is that she manages to transform the employment agency, without anyone's being wary of her, resenting the presumed criticism of their ways, or seeking to get her fired out of fear.
But, farfetched though the plot line becomes, the study of human longings, the need for changes in midlife, and how very true it is that even love for one's family cannot replace the need for going after one's dearest dreams and hopes, is intriguing. I could see all of the deficiencies in the plot - but the brilliance of the characerization left me enchanted.
Rating:
Summary: absorbing to the end of the book
Review: what an enthralling tale of intrigue with characters so real you feel you know them and feel for them by the time you reach the last chapter and having reached the last chapter want the book to go on and on
Up to her usual high standard and whets your appetite for mor
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: The Glass Lake by Maeve Bunchy was a fabulous work! It was romantic and funny and sad all wrapped up into one. I cried
with the characters and laughed with them. I did not want the book to end! It was truly the best book I have read in a
long time and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves books that wrap romance and comedy and tragedy all in one!
Rating:
Summary: If you like Maeve Binchy, read this
Review: More of the Binchy we know (and love), and just as engrossing as her other books, but somewhat less believeable.
This does not take away from the pleasure of reading this book and stepping back into Ireland in the 1950s. Like all her other novels, this is a major page turner, and a very enjoyable and fast read.
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