Binchy, Maeve "Tara Road"

Binchy, Maeve "Tara Road" - 1998

I found this book for a pound in a bargain bookshop when I first started reading English books. Somehow it was always moved to the bottom of my pile of books. Then I moved on to a little more challenging books and "Tara Road" looked less and less appealing. A friend told me this was a great book and I should read it, she wanted to lend me the book. I told her I had it at home and then I had no choice but to start it. What do you think? I liked it. It's one of those "easy read" books but it's different. It leaves a story behind that I still remember years after reading this. Something I can't say about most of those similar reads.

Two women switch houses, both of them want to run away from a problem, of course, they are the sort of problem you can't really run away from, so the problem follows them to their respective resort. Nice easy read, even if that's not what you're looking for.

From the back cover:

"Ria Lynch and Marilyn Vine have never met. Their lives have almost nothing in common. Ria lives in a big ramshackle house in Tara Road, Dublin, which is filled day and night with the family and friends on whom she depends. Marilyn lives in a college town in Connecticut, New England, absorbed in her career, an independent and private woman who is very much her own person.

Two more unlikely friends would be hard to find. Yet a chance phone call brings them together and they decide to exchange homes for the summer. Ria goes to America in the hope that the change will give her space and courage to sort out the huge crisis in her life that is threatening to destroy her. Marilyn goes to Ireland to recover in peace and quiet from the tragedy which she keeps secret from the world, little realising that Tara Road will prove to be the least quiet place on earth.

They borrow each other's houses, and during the course of that magical summer they find themselves borrowing something of each other's lives, until a story which began with loss and suffering grows into a story of discovery, unexpected friendship and new hope. By the time Ria and Marilyn eventually meet, they find that they have altered the course of each other's lives for ever."