Circle of Friends

Highly recommended

Great read. Keeps you interested from beginning to end.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Enjoyed this novel very much.

I love the writings of Maeve Binchy. This book was really good. I'm planning to order some more by her.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I've started reading this book twice and just couldn't get into

I've started reading this book twice and just couldn't get into it. Well, I tried again recently and just finished. It is one of the best Maeve Binchy books I have ever read. I didn't want it to end, but I couldn't wait for the ending to see what happens. I hightly recommend it.

Fun Easy Read

Enjoy a nice stroll through adolescence and young adulthood, with all of it's loyalties and betrayals. Well written characters set in a more innocent time.

Great book! One of her best! Great book!

One of her best! Benny and Eve are characters that you care about and you feel they arre your friends.

Best book

I read this book once a year

Good book

Circle of Friends is overall a good book. There are one or two characters that are relatively unlikeable but they contribute very well to the story. This wasn't a great book but it was good.

Might be a good young adult book

Maybe this book appeals to the Debbie Macomber crowd, but I found it treacly and poorly written. I'm glad I borrowed the eBook from my library and didn't purchase it. How many times can an author use the word "companionably" in one chapter? Quite a few. They walked "companionably," they sat "companionably," they did (fill in the blank) "companionably." Where was the editor for this book? Someone please buy the author a thesaurus.

Having said that, the book might be suitable for teenage girls, though I doubt many of them could relate to the most of the girls' lives in this book, and certainly not their clothing or interactions with the boys in the the story.

If you like chick lit lite, this book is for you.

Recommend to Binchy fans.

Typical Binchy characters who you care about. That's one of the best things I can say about this type of book. This is a comforting, enjoyable read.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Loved this book!!

I am a huge fan of Maeve Binchy and once again one of her stories has touched me and remains in my memory. Circle of Friends is a wonderful story, sad but wonderful in the sense that the main character Benny learns so much. She grows from a child to a woman and although things may turn out not as planned in her life she still remains hopeful and looks toward the future. I believe this is a lesson we could all learn from somewhere in our own journeys.

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

This novel begins with two young girls who become best friends in a small town, Knockglen, just outside of Dublin. Benny Hogan is a beloved and overly protected only child and Eve Malone is an orphan child raised in the local convent by a nun. Benny, awkward, overweight and shy longs to break free of her doting parents, especially when she enrolls in a Dublin university. Eve, whose mother came from an upper class landowner's family and whose father was the convent's caretaker, is resentful of her mother's family. They disinherited her mother when she got pregnant and married "beneath her social class". When Benny and Eve go to the university their "circle of friends" expands to include many others like Nan, a flawlessly beautiful student with carefully laid plans to move beyond her own working class family, and Jack, the handsome rugby player, both of which effortlessly find themselves always at the center of the friend group. Heartbreak and betrayal test both the meaning of love and the strength of friendship. Religious life and distinctive social classes, so prevalent in the Ireland of the late 50s and early 60s, play a significant role in unraveling life for Benny and Eve. There is obviously a Catholic-Protestant turmoil which exacerbates the class struggle. Again, Binchy writes largely about friendship and betrayal and the loyalties made as a result. An example of great Irish storytelling, this is a "rite of passage" novel where friends from differing backgrounds clash and resolve issues during their greater search for independence and self-realization.

Bitter-sweet

My mom recomended this book to me. It started off really well and I loved Benny and Jack together. Then things changed... a lot... and the story line made me really mad. It was somewhat predictable, although there were some very,very surprising twists. The characters were very well represented and their characters really played well in the story. I just wasn't impressed.

The best Binchy book

I've read many of her books and this was by-far... the very best one. Highly recommended. Don't bother with the movie.

A reviewer

Enjoyable story, felt like I was there, although I find Binchy too wordy and I tend to read over chunks of her books. I did enjoy this story and I also watched the movie. THe book was better.

GREAT STORY A MUST READ!

Well my friend kept telling me how good circle of friends was. And when i bought the book and saw how long it was 590 pages i put it on my shelf and said yea one day. And my friend kept telling me . So i decided let me read this book! and this book was amazing i couldnt put it down i am amazed i read 590 pages in a week. One night i stayed up till morning and read 104 pages in one night. I love how she captures the life of each charachter. So good you must read this book!

Outstanding!

The movie was good, but the book is great.

Amazing

I had always been a huge fan of the movie adaptation of this novel, but had never read the book. One day, I just saw it at the bookstore and picked it up. It was ten times better than the movie(starring Chris ODonnell and Minnie Driver). I could really identify with Benny. This book is a must read!

Never Put it Down

this was the best book that I have ever read. I loved it. I am not nuch of a reader so I thought it would take me forever to read the book. I read it all the time. Every time that I had to stop, I didn't want to because something so unexpected would happen. I strongly recommend this book to any teenage girl lookingfor a good summer reading book for the beach.

There at the Beginning ¿ There at the End

I¿ve heard a saying that goes ¿The people, who were there for you at the beginning, are the one¿s who will be there for you at the end.¿ Meaning that the people who were you¿re friends to begin with will always be with you that is, if they are your true friends. If you have ever read A Circle of Friends, by Maeve Binchy then you¿ll know that the saying goes right along with it. Benny Hogan, a girl of a warm, wealthy family, and Eve Malone, an orphan girl who¿s brought up by the nuns, and who has a very difficult personality at times, begin their friendship when they¿re merely ten years old. It tells about their adventures, the tough times they go through, and yet they are always there to help and support each other, being best friends every step of the way. I really loved this book, and I highly recommend it. It was real easy to get into and even though it looks difficult to read due to the fact that it has 596 pages, once you really get into it you¿ll cruise right along never wanting to put the book down. There¿s really great characterization, and imagery in this book. ¿Some of them were half afraid of Eve.¿(Pg. 5).Which is a really good example of characterization because it shows a bit of Eve¿s behavior. Binchy describes things in such great detail that you¿re able to picture things so clearly you could draw a perfect picture. ¿Patsy spoke absently as she greased the trays for the queen cakes with a scrap of butter paper¿ (Pg. 1). The first many chapters are just about Eve and Benny and how they¿re growing up, but while away at college they meet a lot of other companions who end up sharing their bond and they all become friends, yet some of them aren¿t who you think they are. What I like most about this novel is that there are many unexpected twits and turns. You¿ll be reading and all of a sudden you have to re-read it because it¿s so unpredictable that you have trouble believing what you just read is true. It makes the book exciting; if there were no surprises then the book would probably be very boring, and tough to get through. One example for instance is there is a character that is portrayed ¿perfectly¿, she is described as beautiful, brilliant, warm, welcoming, nice, and caring, yet there is a point in the book where that all turns around and you would have never thought that she¿d be the one to pull off what it is that she had done. I would say that there¿s only one semi- negative aspect of this book. There are times that the author is a little too descriptive when describing the townspeople. The townspeople aren¿t really all that important and at times it got a little confusing. Also when the author describes the town, it can get a little perplexing. Other than that though the book was fantastic!

Wow

I could not get enough of Circle of Friends. I started this book looking at the number of pages and thinking how long it would take to finish, but by the end I didn't want it to. I wish that there was a sequel so that I can find out what happens. Great Book.