IT’S PRACTICALLY THE WEEKEND! I can smell the books and feel the weight of my comforter as I prepare for a (hopefully) book filled and relaxing weekend!

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Evening Class

Author: Maeve Binchy

 

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Here’s the premise:

“It was the quiet ones you had to watch. That’s where the real passion was lurking.

They came together at Mountainview College, a down-at-the-heels secondary school on the seamy side of Dublin, to take a course in Italian. It was Latin teacher Aidan Dunne’s last chance to revive a failing marriage and a dead-end career. But Aidan’s dream was headed for disaster until the mysterious Signora appeared, transforming a shared passion for Italy into a life-altering adventure for them all…bank clerk Bill and his dizzy fiance Lizzie: a couple headed for trouble…Kathy, a hardworking innocent propelled into adulthood in a shocking moment of truth…Connie, the gorgeous rich lady with a scandal ready to explode…glowering Lou, who joined the class as a cover for crime. And Signora, whose passionate past remained a secret as she changed all their lives forever….

From the New York Times bestselling author of This Year It Will Be Different, The Glass Lake, and Circle of Friends, comes a novel filled with Maeve Binchy’s signature warmth, wit, and sheer storytelling genius–a spellbinding tale of men and women whose quiet lives hide the most unexpected things….”

 

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Thoughts:

It’s fun to get to step back into Ireland (and spend a little time in Italy before then).

I was talking to my new roommate about the Irish book I was reading and other relaxing romance reads I enjoy. She recommended Maeve Binchy as an author. One night as I was looking through my OverDrive and seeing what library books I could download of Binchy’s, my roommate recommended “Evening Class” as a good one to start with.

It has travel, it has living abroad as a single woman, it has language classes and working in a school, it has Ireland. Basically, it ties together a lot of my interests in strange ways.

I’m 23% into the book. It started out a little slow. I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy the semi-stale and to the point narration. However, these characters and their families are so intricate, strange, and intriguing that I am thoroughly enjoying it so far.

The chapters are a little longer than what I usually find myself reading and that can hinder me in my pursuit of reading. It is easy for me to read a 5-8 minute chapter and justify reading “just one more” before I am reading the entire book and it is three a.m. on a work night. These chapters are 40 minutes to an hour and it makes it hard to read at least one before bed on a trying day. (I think the number itself is more draining than the actual act of reading that long because I usually end up reading far longer with other books.)

Multiple perspectives again…what is with me!? Although these have such long chapters and are intermingled enough that it isn’t as distracting. (Thank goodness!)

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Predictions:

1. Signora and Aidan will hook up and it will lead Aidan back to his wife and Signora will be back to the life she had in Italy.
2. It’ll be a 4 or 4.5 stars out of 5 read.

 

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Have you read Maeve Binchy? Any recommendations?

 

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Check it out on Amazon!

 

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