Nights of Rain and Stars - Maeve Binchy

*****Midday at Midnight café.***** I haven't counted all my book reviews, but I expect they would amount to about a third of all my reviews. I know they are a mixture of the genres, maybe leaning mostly to the general fiction, but I do like to read some literature that I'd class as either romantic, or just pure escapism. I have a few favourite writers in that category and one of them is Maeve Binchy. Better known for her books set in her homeland of Ireland, she still manages to write some that aren't entirely type-set and this book falls into that category. If you haven't read a book by this author before, then you are either young or have ...  Read the complete review

Despite her popularity I have never really been interested in reading a Maeve Binchy novel, mostly because the people that have recommended her novels to me are my Nana and other people around her age, so I though they just wouldn't appeal to me. After hunting around for something to read I read a few of the blurbs on Binchy's novels and thought I might bite the bullet and give one a go. I decided Nights Of Rain And Stars purely because it's set in a traditional Greek village and Greece (especially the small traditional places in Greece) is my favourite place in the whole world (well so far!) The Story The novel begins in the Greek village of Aghia Anna, ...  Read the complete review

As a caveat, I should probably explain that I have never been a fan of Maeve Binchy. But I also never disliked her. I read a couple of her books before reading “Nights of rain and stars” and I liked them, but they did not overwhelm me at all. So what did I think of this little part of her wide collection? By complete coincidence, five tourists vacationing in the Greek village of Aghia Anna meet at a taverna. Two are from Ireland, one from the United States, one from Germany and one from England. All five of them left home in search of something different, leaving friends and family behind. Fiona and Shane are from Ireland. Fiona is a young girl ...  Read the complete review

I have been a fan of Maeve Binchy for a long time - ever since I discovered a glut of her books in my favourite secondhand bookshop in India. Since then, I have slightly outgrown her but perhaps this is because I haven't enjoyed her later books as much as the classic ones. What I've always loved about her work is that all the characters are well and thoroughly fleshed out and their conflicts are conveyed in a realistic way. You feel like these are real people who could very well live next door and when bad things happen to them (as they inevitably do), you can empathise with their struggles and pain because they feel so real and their troubles could so very easily happen ...  Read the complete review

This book is the latest book from a long line of fantastic novels from Maeve Binchy the Irish novelist. Her next novel is due out next year. She is well known for Circle of Friends which was made into a film starring Minnie Driver. Her other novels include Copper Beech, Tara Road, Evening Class, Firefly Summer, Scarlet Feather and Quentins. Most of her novels are set in Ireland a country very close to her heart. Some of the characters in her novels feature in more than one book which I like as you feel you know these people well. I received this book last year as a birthday present, I have the hardback book but it is now available as a paperback and ...  Read the complete review