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Summary: How can you NOT love this book?
Review: I don't think there is anything "typical" about this book. I do, however, think that it's characters reflect the time it takes place in. If the friendships seem "too perfect", that's probably pretty accurate. 1959 in Ireland was (I'm guessing, here) probably a much simpler time- before the A-bomb or AIDS, when drinking every night wasn't constituted alcoholism, when kids could play outside all night long without parents having to worry about kidnapping, and every girl had an ideal image of what her grown-up life would be. I enjoyed the book much more than the movie (as I usually do) because it thouroughly explained why Nan Mahon was the way she was, and why she could seemingly be so cold-hearted in her actions. It also helped us to understand why Benny was kind to a fault, and why most people never gave her much thought. I truly love Maeve Binchy's books. She's a smart woman- she writes about what she knows, and it shows in her novels. If you've ever thought the person you had a crush on was out of your reach, you have to read this book. Inspiring and entertaining.
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Summary: My all-time favorite Binchy book!
Review: I remember the first time I picked up this book ~~ it was my grandmother's and I was in high school. I sat down and read it and totally fell in love with Binchy's writing. In fact, I believe this book set me on the path to reading "better" books! Rereading this book again really affirms the feelings I had experienced the first time around. It is just one of my favorite books of all time!Benny, Eve, Sean, Jack, Nan and other characters are ones that you'll never forget. If you have friends that you ran around with in college and still keep in touch with ~~ I highly recommend this book. It is a book about friendship, love, romance and dreams. Any one of any age can read this book and find the meaning of friendship in it. With Benny's relationship with Jack ~~ there's that first love and intrigue; with Benny's friendship with Eve, there's the silliness that girls share as well as their confidences, hopes and dreams ~~ as well as recovering from broken hearts and disappointment; and there's Sean, the guy everyone loves to hate. Let's not forget Jack ~~ the guy every woman longs to love ~~ only to be pulled up short by his mistakes in love. This book covers the depth of human emotions that beset all of us at one time or another! I recommend readers picking up this book and spend a few days reading it ~~ I can guarantee that the characters with all their flaws will stay with the reader for a long time. It is a book I would read over and over ~~ it's like coming home and finding your best friend waiting for you.
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Summary: Circle of Friends
Review: As I was reading this book, the relationships between all of the characters, and how their lives all intertwine, was what kept me reading. The ways the characters interact and communicate is the central part of the book. The author devotes pages and pages to develop these characters with essential details about their background, their character and how they act with the other characters within this book. At times it concentrates on Benny and Eve's friendship and how they get distracted away, momentarily, but always come back to help the other in times of need. Other times the focus shifts, it goes to the relationships between the parents of all of these friends. On situation is how Benny's parents love her too much to let her go. Another is how Mother Francis is Eve's only real family and how her home is the Convent among the nuns. Nan, a girl who takes proper care of herself and Eve and Benny meet in college, feels that her parents inhibit her from having the kind of lifestyle she wants. Nan doesn't want to have a low social status, in fact she plans to find and marry a rich man that can take care of her. Through these diverse characters, we can see the different relationships between friends and between children and their guardians.
This novel also focuses on the internal thoughts and feelings of Benny, and her search to find independence, and eventually herself. I can relate to her growth and maturation; her struggle to find a balance between her friends and her parents. All throughout her life she has had parents that care too much, and she couldn't tell anyone because the only person she could tell and that would tell her what to do was orphaned since she was a baby. Benny also struggles with love and life in the real world. She experiences love, a sense of need, incomprehension, confusion as well as hope. Benny learns, at the end, that she can be free; without anyone to worry about staying with her, or cheating on her.
This was a very good and thought-provoking novel. It is a good choice for the Rosewater Book award. This is because it captured my attention right from the beginning with Benny's birthday and her disappointment not getting the pretty gift she wanted, but instead a sensible outfit. It was amazing to think that a ten year old girl thought she could and never would be pretty or delicate as the other girls were. However, she grew up into a beautiful person, both in and out, and the most handsome boy loved her. But, through many human mistakes, she realizes he will never be entirely hers. It was an astounding ending that gave true proof of Benny's maturity. She proclaimed that it was not the end of the long journey of finding herself, it didn't have to be, and she was all right with that.
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Summary: Binchy close to her best
Review: This book comes close to the sheer perfection Binchy showed in Light a Penny Candle and Echoes. Like these, it is another 'rites of passage' novel involving friends from different social backgrounds who grow up together in a small Irish town in the 1950s, going on to university together in Dublin in the sixties. There are several friends, mainly Benny, Eve and later Nan Malone... and there is Jack; charming, handsome Jack, who runs after all three girls, including chubby and not-so-beautiful Benny. The film version tried to turn this into a Hollywood hearts-and-flowers soppy ending, but actually Binchy's ending here is more credible in the circumstances. Binchy does not always feel the need to go for the happy endings, the tidy resolutions which authors of other romance novels or rites-of-passage stories like to give us, as was shown in Echoes and Tara Road, for example. Here, the ending Binchy gives us is about the only one possible if the integrity of the characters is to be preserved. Beautiful, slow-paced, characters you feel you are relly getting to know and can identify with, this book is a delight.
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Summary: Fabulous!!! A page turner from cover to cover!!!
Review: I picked up this book because it was a choice on my summer reading list this year. I chose it because I recognized the title from a movie I owned which is actually the film version of this book. When I got the book I groaned because I realized that it was 600 pages. I figured I wasnt going to like the book because it didnt really fit my favorite genres to read, and that the story was going to be rather lumbersome and slow. Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise. Maeve Binchy perfectly captures the reader's attention from page one. Beginning w/ the start of a new friendship and taking you through all the trials and tribulations of life as a young adult. Eve and Benny are perfect for each other because one compliments the other in characteristics and personality. This story was so fabulous that I picked it up on a rainy day and finished it in three days (it was a busy time for me to be reading). I couldnt put it down. I smiled w/ the characters when they were happy, got angry when they were mad, and, yes, cried when they were sad. This story will take you up and not put you down until the very last page.
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Summary: A good escape
Review: Frolic in another world.... in fact, many other worlds. It's classic Binchy.
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Summary: Circle of Friends
Review: In Knockglen, Ireland during the 1950's, Benny Hogan and Eve Malone encounter several hardships as best friends and as young women. Benny is attending courses at the University of Dublin, while Eve works and studies. Benny is 'large,' shy, and kind, while Eve is dark, thin, and 'bird-like'.The two meet the beautiful and flawless Nan Mahon (who's father is a drunk) and the handsome rugby player Jack Foley (who comes from a family of prestige) during their university years, and many situations arise. Though the intentions are not made, both Nan and Jack place Eve and Benny's friendship into catastrophic areas. Through love, hate, betrayal, and jealousy, Eve and Benny work as pair, with Eve stoutly defending Benny, and Benny teaching Eve forgiveness.
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Summary: A Simple Story, A Great Read
Review: Wow! I was pleasantly surprised when I began to read this book. Even though this is a simple story - not action packed, or a thriller - I was hooked from the very beginning! It's the story of Benny and Eve, two girls who become friends when they are ten and become inseperable. The story mainly centers around the girls when they are 18 and head off to college as they meet new people and go through the process of growing up. This is a coming of age story that is so beautifully written, I just couldn't put it down. This is my first Maeve Binchy book, and I plan to read more very soon! I would highly recommend this book!
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Summary: For anyone who remembers being 19 and in love...
Review: If the mark of a great book is its ability to make you continue reading no matter how late it is, "Circle of Friends" deserves at least six stars. Binchy's style may be slightly vanilla (were the fifties really that innocent?), but no one is better at drawing the reader in and making you care about her characters and what will happen to them in the next chapter. Even the relatively uneventful passages are never boring as we watch Benny and her friends make their way out into the world, in some cases not very far into it. Their experiences as first-year university students are all too accurate. I'd nearly forgotten about the politics of school dances and the thrill of being seen with that special someone at the coffee shop after class and the odd sense of "friends forever!" with people you've only known for a few weeks. Here, they don't seem clichéd at all, perhaps because they're so universal and because Binchy retells them in her own unique style and with her vivid characters.
If there is a sense of sugarcoating to the story, it wears off just in time as the plot builds. It's never very suspenseful and the climax is even a bit obvious, but it's also very refreshing to those who have had enough of Hollywood endings (including the one in the movie adaptation of this book). More than anything, this is a very accurate portrayal of how short, intense friendships so often turn out in real life. Highly recommended for fans of coming-of-age fiction.
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Summary: Great Ugly Duckling Story...Not A Cliche
Review: This is one of Binchy's best books, in my opinion. She takes a chcarcter who is very insecure, Benny, and puts her in situations that are new and different for her. Instead of making the standard decisions that every other writer has characters choose, Benny takes a stand in her sheltered life, and ultimately the best decision. This book is about an overweight girl, who goes to college, thinking that the world is not available to her, since she lives with protective parents who want her to marry Sean, her father's assistant in the family menswear shop. She meets Jack, a handsome boy who could have any girl, and who chooses Benny, although is not completely faithful to her. Benny deals with her insecurities about her relationship and life. While Jack is charming and funny, she does not realize that Jack really isn't the boy for her. Her relationships with friends Eve, who is an orphan raised by the nuns of Knockglen, Nan, a Dublin girl, and many other townspeople are intriguing. If you love an underdog/ugly duckling story, this is the one for you. I also think the movie is great, although I typically do not like movie adaptions.
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