Movie Mondays

Tara Road

Book, 1991 by Maeve Binchy

Against all odds, two newlyweds manage to buy the house of their dreams. In 1982, property speculation is beginning to be a big, big thing in Dublin--and their street is very much in an up-and-coming part of town. "They laughed and hugged each other. Danny Lynch from the broken-down cottage in the back of beyond and Ria Johnson from the corner house in the big, shabby estate were not only living like gentry in a big Tara Road mansion, they were actually debating what style of dining table to buy." But for its various inhabitants, the street is to become a boulevard of dreams--some broken, others created anew. Maeve Binchy has long proved herself a secure hand at multiple story lines, and over the course of 500 satisfying pages she focuses on Ria; her best friend, Rosemary Ryan, a beautiful, endlessly selfish career woman; Gertie, the battered wife of a drunkard; and several other intriguing women, each of whom has secrets not to be shared. There is even an all-knowing fortune teller who early on hints that Ria will travel and start a successful business--two things she knows are definitely not in the offing.

Yet after our supposedly happy housewife and mother of two is confronted by some inexorable home truths, a chance phone call from America will change her life, forcing her to discard her illusions about men, women, and marriage and start all over again. At the same time, the Connecticut caller, Marilyn Vine, has her own lessons to learn when she and Ria swap houses for the summer. Tara Road is a stirring look at the reality behind our consuming fantasies, and a page-turner to boot.

It was a 1999 Oprah's Book Club selection.

Movie, 2005 directed by Gillies MacKinnon

Features: Olivia Williams, Andie MacDowell

Tagline: Sometimes you must lose your life to find a new one...

Did you know? Maeve Binchy makes an uncredited cameo as a restaurant patron.



Have you read the book or seen the movie?

I've read it and seen the movie. The book was definitely better but the movie's not bad either.

Sunday Survey

Less than 1 week left to finish reading Blame!

5=I love it!
4=I really like it.
3=I like it.
2=It's just okay.
1=I don't like it.

Saturday Spotlight

Today's author is Harper Lee.


She was born born April 28, 1926 in Monoroeville, Alabama.
Growing up, she was best friends with her neighbor, Truman Capote.
She pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama, but never finished it.
She worked as an airline reservation clerk until 1958.
She published To Kill A Mockingbird in 1960 after taking a year off to write it.


She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961.
She accompanied Truman Capote to Kansas to help him research what would become his best-selling book, In Cold Blood.


Although she began writing 2 other books, she never published another one after TKAM.
She has earned various honorary degrees and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.

Why do you think she didn't write another book?

Feature Fridays

Today's classic (in honor of its 50th anniversay and since we just selected it for next month's book) is To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee.

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

(Although there have been rumors that Truman Capote actually wrote it, they are unfounded.)

Did you know? Several people and events from Harper Lee's childhood parallel those of the fictional Scout.

We'll be reading (or re-reading) it next month, but have you seen the movie starring Gregory Peck?

Thoughts for Thursday

If you were to pick your next book based on title only, what would it be?

It would probably be one of these two: