Sunday, May 17, 2015

35. A Week in Winter - Maeve Binchy

Listened to audio on Audible...
Read by Rosalyn Landor
2012, Orion
464 pgs.
Adult CRF set in western Ireland & Dublin
Finished 5/16/2015
Goodreads rating: 3.77
My rating:5/enchanting

First line/s: First person:  CHICKY  "Everyone had their own job to do on the Ryan's farm in Stonybridge."

My comments:  This was an enchanting story, told from many perspectives and linked together so that the first few characters are still the major ones. The plot was fascinating, but the character development was superb, putting the reader into the life of each and every one of the 11 or 12 characters, major and minor.  So many stories rolled into one! And the setting, on the western coast of Ireland - I truly loved listening to every word.

Goodreads synopsis:  Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know one another. When Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, everyone thinks she is crazy. Helped by Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house) and Orla, her niece (a whiz at business), Chicky is finally ready to welcome the first guests to Stone House’s big warm kitchen, log fires, and understated elegant bedrooms. John, the American movie star, thinks he has arrived incognito; Winnie and Lillian are forced into taking a holiday together; Nicola and Henry, husband and wife, have been shaken by seeing too much death practicing medicine; Anders hates his father’s business, but has a real talent for music; Miss Nell Howe, a retired schoolteacher, criticizes everything and leaves a day early, much to everyone’s relief; the Walls are disappointed to have won this second-prize holiday in a contest where first prize was Paris; and Freda, the librarian, is afraid of her own psychic visions.

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