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Title: Quentins by Maeve Binchy ISBN: 0-451-20990-7 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.52 (85 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Another disappointment
Comment: Like Scarlet Feathers, this book really let me down. As an avid Binchy reader I expected more. Scarlet Feathers, as her last book before retirement, had extremely unlikable characters and was not up to her previous books. Quentins is even worse as it is so boring and unbelievable. Where is the warmth and intelligence that marked Binchy's previous books? Ella is unlikable, naive and stupid. If she was so beloved as a child, why did she grow up to be so utterly lacking in self-esteem that she spends two years with a married man and still can't make up her mind about him after he leaves her and bankrupts her father? This is not the Maeve Binchy I love. For those of you who are first time readers of her books, please read Circle of Friends, a hundred times better than the movie, Copper Beech, Tara Road, Glass Lake to name a few. Her books of short stories are great too. Don't judge Maeve Binchy's storytelling ability by this book. I guess everyone is entitled to a couple of clunkers. If she came out of retirement to write this book, I'm afraid it was a mistake.
Rating: 4
Summary: Vintage Binchy--Almost
Comment: Having thought that Maeve Binchy had retired from her craft in 2001, I was surprised and thrilled when "Quentins" appeared, and I snapped it up.
"Quentins" is by no means Binchy's best book. It's a bit tired, a bit confusing, and its tone is ever so slightly cynical. I hope this is not a reflection of Binchy's state of mind, but merely the subject matter of the plot. The heroine, Ella, a strangely one-dimensional character when compared with Binchy's usual, sails through an exemplary early life only to fall madly, obsessively in love with the wrong man.
Ella's story is told with Quentins, a fictional upscale Dublin restaurant, as the backdrop. Through this popular eatery, we meet lots of interesting people, whose stories we learn--and we have the return, however briefly, of some previous Binchy characters as well. But even they do not have the life they had in the original books--they seem somehow two-dimensional. I don't know whether that was the fault of this reader, who had a lot of trouble keeping all the names straight, or of Binchy herself, who is practically sacred in my eyes!
I would never recommend reading this book as a first taste of Maeve Binchy. But for those of us who have followed her wonderful literary career through the years, and who have read her entire collection, it's a joy just to be reading another offering when we thought that Binchy had retired from writing. If this were any other author, I would rate the book a 3. But I just can't do that; the book captured and kept my interest, and although its odd tone made me uneasy, I'm not at all sorry I read it. Binchy fans: Go for it, but don't expect "Circle of Friends" or its ilk. Binchy newcomers: pick another book, such as the aforementioned, before tackling this one.
Rating: 4
Summary: Indecisive Heroine
Comment: This offers a lot of the typical warmhearted Binchy charm, but you've got to put up with the endless pining and whining of the lead character who has built her life around a cheating womanizing crook. By the halfway point, when Ella Brady repeatedly puts off revealing important information (which would benefit everyone she knows) because her lover entrusted it to her, I wanted to step in, give her a hard shake and slap some sense into her. I got the impression that Binchy was drawing things out because if Ella did the right thing she'd wrap up the plot to quickly.
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Title: Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy ISBN: 0451203771 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Irish Girls About Town: An Anthology of Short Stories by Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly ISBN: 0743457463 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Return Journey by Maeve Binchy ISBN: 0440224594 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 08 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Echoes by Maeve Binchy ISBN: 0440122090 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 10 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Tara Road by Maeve Binchy ISBN: 0440235596 Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 18 July, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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