Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing and unfinished
Review: I loved "Evening Class". I enjoyed "Light a Penny Candle". Then I read "The Lilac Bus". It was very disappointing because it seemed incomplete and unfinished. For a writer who tied up all loose ends as carefully as Maeve Binchy did with the characters of "Evening Class", why does she leave the chartered bus travelers' histories just twisting in the wind? And then she follows this with several short stories that also appear to have no conclusions--I don't get it. I felt cheated.
Rating: 
Summary: The Lilac Bus...where is the ending
Review: I thought this book was delighful, I could not wait to get to the end for the conclusions. Much to my disappointment there are no endings! you are left handing. My balloon was burst.
Rating:
Summary: The Lilac Bus...where is the ending
Review: I thought this book was delighful, I could not wait to get to the end for the conclusions. Much to my disappointment there are no endings! you are left handing. My balloon was burst.
Rating: 
Summary: Maeve leaves you hanging, and not in a good way
Review: I want to start off by saying that I have enjoyed most of Maeve's books (my favorites being Tara Road, Evening Class and The Glass Lake), but this one I did not. The book is really a collection of short stories that are woven together, but not in any meaningful sense. Each chapter relates the story of a character, but at the end of the chapter you're waiting for more, waiting to make a connection with that character, waiting for the story to start. And still, at the end of the book you're wondering what the point was. It doesn't go anywhere. She tells you about the different people, but that's it, she just describes them and their histories. There is no plot, no climax, no closure.
Rating:
Summary: These are people I'd like to live next door to.
Review: If you want Ireland without actually getting on a crowded Aer Lingus flight and going there, this book will give it to you. If you want to meet the treasures of the Celtic race without all the rain and the pub smoke, try dipping into The Lilac Bus. These are the real people of Ireland: funny, stingy, generous, troubled, but always interesting. Maeve Binchy may have just gone around her own home town and described the average inhabitants. You'll feel like you've gone and stayed with Binchy for a week or so and met all her fascinating neighbors.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful series of character sketches
Review: If you're expecting a novel like Echoes or Tara Road, don't buy this book. If, on the other hand, you admire Maeve Binchy's ability to tell you all about a character's life, personality, interests and dreams in a few pages, then this is the book for you. The Lilac Bus is a series of 'postcards' or brief character sketches of a number of different people, all of whom travel home from Dublin each Friday evening on the same bus. Each has their own preoccupations and concerns, and Binchy manages to give us some fascinating insights into not only the individuals here, but into the tight little society to where they're travelling, with its own mores and habits.
Rating:
Summary: Not a collection of short stories
Review: It's a fabulous book, engrossing, intriguing and everything. But there's an aspect I just can't agree with the publishers: "The Lilac Bus" is definitely not a story collection. "Victoria Line, Central Line" (also known as "London Transports"), "Dublin Four" or "This Year It Will Be Different" are good examples of this kind of work, not the case of "The Lilac Bus" though. A short story is isolated from the other ones in the same collection, each chapter has its own beginning and end, although they are normally gathered because they belong and are related to a main, general theme (e.g. several parties taking place at the end of the year/women who are professionally and financially independent). That's not the case in this story about eight people who travel every weekend from Dublin to the same destination (a pretty village called Rathdoon) in a lilac-colored minibus. All the characters have their lives more or less intertwined with the others. Each chapter belongs to a different character, but they are linked - an interesting resource similarly used by the author in "The Copper Beech", "Silver Wedding" or "Evening Class" - and these are all novels, not short stories!
Every time a new chapter starts the author goes back in time to focus on the same weekend, of course from a different perspective. That's because such weekend is particularly special to all of the passengers, so they are even connected in terms of chronology as well. They meet throughout the weekend, they think and wonder at times about these people who share the same bus, the chapters are not separate different stories. Obviously each of them have their own special reasons for travelling home, their own points of view, secrets and mysteries that are discovered as each chapter is unfolded. It's really silly to classify this book as a collection of short stories then. All right, it's much shorter than other very long novels such as "Light a Penny Candle" or "The Glass Lake" which are full of details. Never mind, it is just more compact, but still a very good, pleasant, enjoyable read. Call it a "short novel" if you prefer - but nobody needs to be an expert, a literature specialist to notice that's not a collection of short stories.
Rating:
Summary: Leaves you wanting much more
Review: Just finished reading The Lilac Bus and I must say I kind of feel like I wasted my time. The charaters are all interesting and nice to know about but it seemed like you were reading the first couple chapters of a book and then not being able to finish it to find out what else happened. The first eight storys do have a common link as they all ride the bus together the last four are just incomplete stories all their own. I have read many books by Maeve Binchy and have loved them all, but I'm sorry to say I wish I would have passed on this one. Maybe if your a fan of short stories you would like this.
Rating:
Summary: The things that isolate us
Review: Maeve Binchy novels are about ordinary people who have the sort of problems that most people have. Her characters are often working class people who have money worries, problematic personal relationships, and frequently work in dead-end jobs. In "The Lilac Bus," 7 people who live and work in Dublin, take the lilac bus owned and driven by Tom Fitzgerald, back home to the village of Rathdoon. They arrive late every Friday night and return to Dublin--to their jobs--on Sunday nights. To the other villagers, it's somewhat of a puzzle why anyone who could spend a weekend in Dublin, would choose to come home every single weekend. "The Lilac Bus" is a series of short stories which solve the puzzle of the bus passengers' individual desire or obligation to return to Rathdoon. Each passenger has a unique story, and yet somehow the stories are connecting too. Following the 8 stories about the bus passengers, Bicnhy gives the reader four additional short stories about Dubliners. I was at first a bit disappointed that the stories didn't continue with the bus passengers (I was ready to hear more about them). Instead, the other four stories are rather sad and concern individuals who seem terribly isolated--even though they are in the middle of Dublin. Religion, and family expectations all seem to serve as ways in which individuals and families isolate each other and themselves. But Binchy, as always, has such a generous approach to human nature, that the stories remained sad--rather than depressing.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful short stories
Review: My wife, a huge Maeve Binchy fan, recommended that I check out this book. I could not be more pleased. While each of the stories stood on their own merit and were quite engaging, I very much enjoyed the way they intertwined. And it is amazing the way in which Binchy can flesh out her characters in only ten or fifteen pages. (Oh, Nancy Morris, God help you...) Last month, I read my first Richard Russo novel. This month, Maeve Binchy. I have some good reading ahead of me.
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