Rating: 
Summary: Not the Best of Binchy-Underdeveloped
Review: I really didn't think this book was all that great as I had expected it to be. Ella Brady wants to tell the story of a generation and a city through the history of a restaurant. She wants to film a documentary about Quentins that will capture the spirit of Dublin from the 1970s to the present day. After all, the restaurant saw the people of a city become more confident in everything, from their lifestyles to the food they chose to eat.
And Quentins has a thousand stories to tell; tales of love, of betrayal, of revenge; of times when it looked ready for success and of times when it seemed it must close in failure. The book touched on stories of lives of people, but not enough. It really failed to focus on any characters lives at all, and just gave brief explanations of different people in the story.
I really felt therefore, that the book lacked depth and meaning. Other books of Binchy are much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Third time's the charm?
Review: This is the third time I have attempted to read a Binchy novel. The first two times I never made it past the first page before I lost interest. QUENTINS kept my attention all the way through. I found the characters realistic and the stories riveting. I think I'll go back to the others and try again after enjoying this one so much. I did find one thing that kept distracting me. The writing bounces around like a fishing boat in a stormy sea. It's choppy -- almost as if a copyreader went through and put periods after a certain number of words in each sentence. There is an amazing number of incomplete sentences in this book. It occurred to me to wonder if, since Binchey is a British writer, the text was "dumbed down" for Americans. I sure would like to test my theory by reading the novel as it was published in the UK. The central story, although thoroughly predictable, is a riveting one. You'll figure out the ending before you reach the middle but you'll keep reading to see how she works it all out. Binchey is a great storyteller.
Rating:
Summary: No complaints
Review: I think this was a fine book and I really enjoyed it. For some reason, many readers are complaining about the computer being "forgotten" by a character, but that's incorrect--he left it behind intentially. As for the rest -- the tone and characters -- hey, it's what the writer is known for and I for one enjoyed the relaxing escape it provided. It's nice to be among "good people" (for the most part.)
Rating: 
Summary: SO not her best!
Review: I love Maeve Binchy. I put my reserve in for this book and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. How I love to spend a mini-vacation in Ireland with Maeve and all her warm and homely characters!
Not this book. How many times does a young woman have to see her married lover with his wife before she catches on? Maeve failed to make him charming enough for even the reader to understand what she sees in him! (In fact, we could see his ears and tail from miles away.) We're introduced to this lovely young woman and her "near perfect" family life in which she is totally loved. She simply "falls" for a guy, understandable, but this much loved and admired person seems so totally insubstantial. We never did get what was so wonderful about her, except she remained stupidly loyal to him even after her parents had to move into the garden shed because her Charm Guy conned them out of their life savings. Even when her NEW Big Bucks Boyfriend suggests she turn him in, she still says she has to "think about it". Think about what, air head? I totally lost interest in her lame shenanigans.
I enjoyed many of the other characters, including ones I've know from other books, but it cut up the story so much to have all these other people flitting in and out, and never staying long enough for me to really warm up to them.
I also found the writing to be choppy and often had to back-track on sentences that seemed to not make sense. Anyone editing these things?
I'll say it again. I love Maeve Binchy. But this book is a mess.
Rating: 
Summary: Quentins
Review: I thought it was a great book!
Rating:
Summary: Terrible!
Review: 've never read Binchy before, but apparently this Dublin novel is full of characters from previous novels of hers. While that may add some level of interest to this weak romantic drama for her avid readers, it's hard to imagine they'll be able to overlook the wholly ludicrous main plotline and its insufferable protagonist. First of all, the documentary plotline-which is what attracted me to the book in the first place-doesn't arrive until about a third of the way in. Prior to that we have the saccharine story of Ella Brady, a stock nice girl-next-door who gets on wonderfully with everyone and doesn't realize how beautiful she is. She has a two year affair with a charming and obviously shallow married financial advisor who lies consistently to her, and is clearly not interested in leaving his wife. Eventually, he embezzles a ton of money and flees to the Costa del Sol, leaving a lot of Dubliners-including Ella's father!-penniless. But check this out: he accidentally leaves his laptop, stuffed to the brim with incriminating evidence that would help restore people's money, in Ella's apartment! As implausible as that is, that's not even the lame part! The entire rest of the book she has in her hands the information to recover some of the stolen funds and not only nail the man who lied to and abandoned her, but ruined her parents, and many other good people. But she doesn't do anything with it and even lies to the police about it! Meanwhile, she's constantly wringing her hands and feeling guilty about everyone's plight! This is all so unbelievably stupid that the book is unredeemable. Ella is one of the lamest and unintentionally unlikable protagonists I've come across in the long time. Which is too bad, because there are a number of likable and interesting characters elsewhere in the novel, and Binchy does a nice job of making each interesting. And once the documentary plotline is introduced, there are a number of stand-alone vignettes which are quite engaging. As a whole though, it's structurally unsound. She seems to want to write Ella's lame romance story and weave it into a "Grand Hotel" (or rather Finbar's Hotel!) series of short pieces Dublin. So while the book has some positives, any benefit will be outweighed by the truly horrible main plotline, and a predictable schmaltzy, puke-inducing tearjerker of an ending.
Rating:
Summary: Like visiting old friends
Review: My Mum-in-law introduced me to Maeve Binchy with Evening Class a few years back, and I have since read all of her novels. Quentins is probably not a good place to start if you are new to Binchy. There are several characters from some of her older books who make appearances, both small and large, so if you haven't read Evening Class, Tara Road, and Scarlet Feather you won't get everything from this one that you might.
But it is a wonderful book. She has such a talent for creating characters that are immediately likeable. Everyone is important in a Binchy book, no matter how inconsequential they may be, they all have hopes and dreams, pasts and memories.
This is a cuddle up on a winter's day book, and it felt great to visit Maeve Binchy's Dublin again.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Binchy--Almost
Review: Having thought that Maeve Binchy had retired from her craft in 2001, I was surprised and thrilled when "Quentins" appeared, and I snapped it up. "Quentins" is by no means Binchy's best book. It's a bit tired, a bit confusing, and its tone is ever so slightly cynical. I hope this is not a reflection of Binchy's state of mind, but merely the subject matter of the plot. The heroine, Ella, a strangely one-dimensional character when compared with Binchy's usual, sails through an exemplary early life only to fall madly, obsessively in love with the wrong man. Ella's story is told with Quentins, a fictional upscale Dublin restaurant, as the backdrop. Through this popular eatery, we meet lots of interesting people, whose stories we learn--and we have the return, however briefly, of some previous Binchy characters as well. But even they do not have the life they had in the original books--they seem somehow two-dimensional. I don't know whether that was the fault of this reader, who had a lot of trouble keeping all the names straight, or of Binchy herself, who is practically sacred in my eyes! I would never recommend reading this book as a first taste of Maeve Binchy. But for those of us who have followed her wonderful literary career through the years, and who have read her entire collection, it's a joy just to be reading another offering when we thought that Binchy had retired from writing. If this were any other author, I would rate the book a 3. But I just can't do that; the book captured and kept my interest, and although its odd tone made me uneasy, I'm not at all sorry I read it. Binchy fans: Go for it, but don't expect "Circle of Friends" or its ilk. Binchy newcomers: pick another book, such as the aforementioned, before tackling this one.
Rating:
Summary: Not Binchy at Her Best
Review: I love Maeve Binchy's books - but this book is really a pastiche - a collection of vignettes held together with a too predictable beginning and ending for the young heroine besotted by an older, married man, who promises her love and an happily ever after life. I did enjoy reading about the characters from her other books and finding out what happened to them. I would compare this book to a collection of Ms. Binchy's short story collections - but not as good. Nice read but not a page turner.
Rating:
Summary: Not as engaging as her other books ...
Review: I could not finish the last 2 cassettes -- the plot meanders and the characters are stereotypical.
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