Product Description

Night after night the beautiful woman walked beside the serene waters of Lough Glass. Until the day she disappeared, leaving only a boat drifting upside down on the unfathomable lake that gave the town its name. Ravishing Helen McMahon, the Dubliner with film-star looks and unfulfilled dreams, never belonged in Lough Glass, not the way her genial pharmacist-husband Martin belonged, or their spirited daughter Kit. Suddenly, she is gone and Kit is haunted by the memory of her mother, seen through a window, alone at the kitchen table, tears streaming down her face. Now Kit, too, has secrets: of the night she discovered a letter on Martin’s pillow and burned it, unopened. The night her mother was lost. The night everything changed forever…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114319 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-01
• Released on: 1996-03-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 768 pages

Amazon.com
In the tradition of her beloved novel Circle of Friends, Irish novelist Maeve Binchey offers a wonderful old-fashioned melodrama with a contemporary cast of compelling characters. A sly, seductive, and compulsively readable book, perfect for rainy afternoons and late nights in bed.

From Publishers Weekly
Irish novelist Binchy's latest saga of family loyalties and secrets spent 12 weeks on PW's bestseller list.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA?With the popularity of the film version of Binchy's Circle of Friends, this story, which traces the developments in the lives of two young friends in a small Irish town in the '50s, is likely to have wide appeal. The heroine, Kit, is shown to be at odds with her best friend, Clio, from the first scene. The differences in their values and emotions persist and separate them as the years pass. The life of Kit's beautiful mother unfolds in a concurrent plot line. Helen is generally believed to have died in a tragic drowning. She has, however, gone off with a lover. The story of her business successes and romantic complexities parallels her daughter's years of maturing, providing Kit and readers with ironic insights as she and a very few of the townspeople become aware of the woman's new life. A big, easy, comfortable read.?Frances Reiher, King's Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

This book is about different types of people loving others.
There was tragedy and sadness from unrequited loves. A loves B. B loves C. C loves others. The first 400 pages were sad and a little tedious to get through. The last 350 pages were wonderful! One georgeous man was shallow and evil, always having short-term love affairs. Another gorgeous man was wild with women when young, but was faithful and good when he finally ended up with the right woman.

CAUTION SPOILERS: It was a good reminder of how loving the wrong person can ruin one's life. Lena was a doormat for Louis. Doing everything for him including pretending not to be angry when he would go off with other women. Her only goal was that he would come back to her later. Then, her daughter Kit fell in love with Stevie, who appeared to be similar to Louis. He had many affairs before he ended up with Kit, but, he was not like Louis which made for an interesting comparison. I loved the why and how Kit first asked out Stevie. She did it as a favor to someone else. I enjoyed how she was trying to flirt with him, feeling that he would see through her phony attempts, yet she was surprised that he liked what she thought of as "fake flirting". I loved their relationship, which began after page 440.

An interesting side story was Sister Madeleine, who lived in a hut as a hermit. Most of the local people would visit her for advice. Her guiding views of life were "to do the right thing" and that meant "to do what hurt nobody". People would tell her their secrets and she never revealed those secrets. She had an interesting way of talking so as to give good advice yet not reveal secrets from others.

Even though Lena was a doormat to Louis, I loved seeing her competent, smart business woman side. I loved how she talked Jessie into hiring her and then grew the business into something much larger and very successful, all the while giving credit to others. She made everyone else look great. She never took any credit for things, but it was understood that she was the reason behind the company's success. It was a wonderful talent which I think many people could benefit from if they could do something similar in the "real world".

As I mentioned, the first half of the book was a little hard to get through, but I'm definitely glad I read it. I know I will think of things from the book from time to time. I would have liked to have seen more from the point of view of Louis. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: none. Setting: prior to 1995 in Lough Glass and Dublin, Ireland, and London, England. Copyright: 1995. Genre: human relationships fiction.

Favorite
This is still my favorite Binchy novel and I have read them all. The scope of these characters' stories, the decision moments that impact the rest of their lives and the lives of those around them is finely drawn. Weaving all the lives together with good pacing took real skill.

3.5 stars for my second Binchy experience...
Although this novel really struck a chord with me by dealing with the "woman leaves comfortable home for love her life" bit, I found it all too similar to Tara Road, the only other Binchy novel I have read as of yet. "Handsome man runs around on the woman who is madly in love with him and she either doesn't notice or pretends not to". However, I found it refreshing that this one at least had other characters and storylines running to distract from how similar the Lena/Louis relationship was to the Ria/Danny relationship in Tara Road. I still feel that Ms. Binchy is a good storyteller in that she makes you care about what happens to basically all of the characters (except, of course, for the wandering husband figure). She's kept me going, I will certainly read another of her books when I get the chance.