Echoes

This book, like all of hers, fills me with joy. Soothing,laughter, bittersweet moments. Definitely in my top five authors! The characters are rich and full of life and Maeve gives enough room for your imagination to create the rest of these characters appearances and behaviors. This is one of the best books ever. I am really thrilled with it

I'm rounding this book up to 4 stars despite the fact that there are some themes that I hate. I started this fairly lengthy book yesterday morning and finished it in the early hours of this morning. It is one of those stories that stay with you and I was still thinking about it when I woke up. The setting (Castlebay, Ireland) is different and there are no familiar secondary characters from other books except for Father Flynn. We are introduced to various characters back in the 1950's. We watch them grow up and follow them up until the sixties. We have Angela, a very dedicated teacher, who has an interest in helping Clare, a young girl from a poor family. Clare is the only bright one in her family and she will need scholarships to go further with her education. Angela was the same when she was younger. Clare works incredibly hard and manages to get a scholarship to secondary school. David is the son of the local doctor and he lives a privileged life. His mother is a very unlikeable character throughout the book. Gerrie is the son of the local photographer and he is the local playboy, no girl can resist him except for Clare. There are a host of other people but these characters are the ones to watch. We follow their lives and loves and know that things aren't going to necessarily turn out well. I read some of the negative reviews and I agree that the ending was pretty abrupt and not particularly satisfying. That's what had me still thinking about it this morning.+++Spoilers+++I'm not a fan of cheating and I disliked the fact that David was so easily able to begin an affair with another character. We know that he and his wife (I won't spoil that) were each other's firsts so it felt like a huge betrayal.

I liked the story, though it seemed similar to other ones by Binchey. For me, the development of the story with the descriptions of Castlebay and its inhabitants brought back memories. Castlebay reminded me very much of Ballybunion, Ireland which I visited several years ago. The ocean front cliffs, the walk down to the beach, the golf course, the local general store where the shop keepers worked and lived, the summer beach visitors, the local pubs and the close knit town all seemed the same as described in the book. The story though has a common theme—poor girl in love with well to do boy who must fight for their love against local prejudice. A good, however predictable, read.

What the hell did I just read? I stayed up late the past two nights reading what I thought was a slowly unfolding but ultimately gratifying saga; what I wound up with was a slowly unfolding and ultimately falling-off-the-cliff wannabe thriller.Synopsis: Everyone starts out with potential. Some of that potential is realized, in really gratifying ways. You begin to like and even love some of the characters. A romance is introduced, kind of abruptly. All that potential goes away. Everyone stays the same, becomes boring, or becomes absurdly and grotesquely disappointing, with the exception of a minor supporting character. You hold out hope even though you're at least 85% through the book. Things get weird but not exciting. Everyone devolves further. Someone dies. The end.This is like the book that prompted the saying "lost the plot." WHERE IN GOD'S NAME DID THAT PLOT EVEN GO. (Answer: Right off a #$&*^@$ cliff is where it went.)Maeve, darling, if you're going to write such an unsatisfying, here's-a-middle-finger-for-you kind of a book, fine. Get some of that anger out, girl. But at least have the decency to wrap it up in 200 pages or so. Why did you waste all that writing on this nosedive of a plot?? Unless you are just mad at your readers for some reason. In which case, success! As a reader, I do feel personally attacked.---EDIT: OK, now I realize that this was one of Maeve's first books, not a later one. EVERYTHING MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW. Also, RIP, MB. Thank you for redeeming us with all of your subsequent books. I'm glad you ultimately decided to forgo the saga-meets-unerotic-thriller genre.---SPOILER ALERTIt's like Maeve Binchy saw the movie Unfaithful and thought to herself "Now, THAT's an ending. I want that," then, because she actually is a decent writer who can't help but try to develop the plotline and the characters a bit, wrote a massive book to support what is essentially the ending of a cheap erotic thriller ... minus any actual eroticism. What the hell?? At least Unfaithful had those steamy sex scenes. There are none of those in this book, so you don't know you're wading into the ending of Unfaithful until the last 50 pages or so. But once you're in it, get ready for a lot of "shivering" and "shuddering," some talk of sex but absolutely no sex scenes, and everyone becoming the most disappointing and/or boring versions of themselves. The end.

I think this may be one of the best books I have ever read! Being an avid reader,that is saying a lot. I feel like I truly know the inhabitants of a small Irish town as if I lived there. Clare was an unusual heroine, full of love and hate, but most of all, real. The story deals with her life , her hopes , dreams, courage, stubbornness, and fears. The author makes you feel all the emotions she is feeling. The other people living in this tiny seaside town are just as real, thanks to Maeve Binchy. W e see all sides of them, and feel their successes and failures as our own. As this story moves to its shattering climax, hopefully it reminds us of the love and compassion each one of us needs.

After reading some historical novels lately I was in need of a different kind of read. This was it. I love the way the characters are woven together as I get to know each one. The end leaves me looking for “what happened next.Thank you!

Clare is such a delightful little girl and young woman, I hope there is a follow up book that reveals the path she takes.

I always love the books written by Maeve Binchy. I am always sad to see the story end. I love that her stories include characters and places from her other books. I highly reading all her books.

When I read a novel by Maeve Binchy I wonder whether this one will be a let down. Well, read on because this one is again superb. She does it out of what seems like unpromising material She is very Irish and the Catholic church is as ever influential and well to the forefront. There is usually a priest or two and their presence is not always welcome. In this story a young girl from an ordinary background,-although to many if your parents owned a shop you were well up the ladder, - is unusual in that she is clever and hard working and intends to go to university and to become a valued academic. She is helped beyond the call of duty by Angela, a teacher at a local convent and the one of the only decent females in the story. The fact that Binchy is herself a woman makes it less problematic to comment on the shear awfulness of the female characters. They are mostly parochial, small minded, and, I quote, downright bitchy, a term that Binchy uses frequently herself. Out of all this closely observed behaviour in a small Irish seaside holiday resort she produces a narrative which makes you gasp often and is riveting always. There is a great deal of sadness in this book which is barely resolved at the end. The narrowness of life in 1950s and 1960s Ireland leaves its mark on everyone and the wholesome characters should be savoured as the signs of future hope and optimism.

An excellently told Irish saga-ette, just what you need on a cold night in with a nice glass of something. You'll get totally hooked on this, though, nothing will distract you.Maeve Binchy does what she does best here: tells an engagingly interwoven story about the lives and careers of a couple of children from Castlebay. In the 1950s boys went into good, solid professions like their fathers and girls stayed at home and got married. Clare is the one who's not going to settle for that, it's secondary school and university for her, even if that means secret studying with her teacher and fighting the pressure to help run the family grocer's shop.All goes swimmingly as far as university, but then fate kicks in and life takes a more traditional turn - marriage and children.The author explores the tensions within families in a small community and shows that traditions may still assert themselves in spite of every effort to escape them.Castlebay almost becomes a character itself: head of a family over which it exerts control. It is so recognisable of those growing seaside resorts of the 50s and 60s, as well as the type of place where everyone knows everyone else's business and each type fits in somewhere.A good relaxing read.

I am a huge Binchy fan, and have lost myself in any number of her books, but just couldn't get on with this one. I went back to it a second time, but even then I gave up about 20% of the way through. Very slow, and failed to capture the community spirit of the time that she usually writes about so well, it was disjointed.

I’ve read this book before and it is the type of book you can read and re read. It is a well written, warm and comforting story, full of believable characters, love and tragedy. You feel every emotion. Maeve Binchey was an amazing writer and all her books are well worth a read.

The book transports you to an Irish town weaving magical descriptions of its characters. It was a trip down memory lane as it reminded me of many a trip to an Irish seaside town.