Get through part 1 (it can move slowly and makes you wonder if you've downloaded the right book based upon publishers comments), and get ready to enjoy a much more engaging story once the women exchange homes. Having learned a great deal, about themselves and about each other, they find that they have become, firmly and forever, good friends.Ī moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master artisan, Tara Road is Maeve Binchy at her very best - utterly beautiful, hauntingly unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable. At the end of the summer, the women at last meet face-to-face. Marilyn seems to have become bosom friends with Ria's children, as well as with Colm, a handsome restaurateur, whom Ria has begun to miss terribly. Ria seems to have become quite a hostess, entertaining half the neighborhood, which at first irritates the reserved and withdrawn Marilyn, a woman who has always guarded her privacy. The two women exchange houses for the summer with extraordinary consequences, each learning that the other has a deep secret that can never be revealed.ĭrawn into lifestyles vastly differing from their own, at first each resents the news of how well the other is getting on. By a chance phone call, Ria meets Marilyn, a woman from New England unable to come to terms with her only son's death and now separated from her husband. She fully believed she was happily married, right up until the day Danny told her he was leaving her to be with his young, pregnant girlfriend. Ria lived on Tara Road in Dublin with her dashing husband, Danny, and their two children.

Tara road novel