Customer Reviews

Evening Class

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was first introduced to Maeve Binchy by my army officer, and have been captivated and have read ALL her stories ever since reading The Copper Beech. All the characters in Evening Class are all well fleshed out, and you really develop feelings for each and every one of them. The individual stories will make you sad, angry and move you all at the same time. The best thing about reading a Maeve Binchy's book is the inter-human relationships; how vastly different lives can somehow be entwined through some twist of fate. It makes very interesting reading as you read through the lives of Signora (my fave character! Hers is one of the most touching and moving stories of all in the book), Aidan and his family etc.. This book is just so interesting that I simply cannot put it down! I finished the book in 1 and 1/2 days, at one go!!! For those of you who are still hesitating, GO AND BUY IT NOW!!! This book is even better than her other recent release "This Year It Will Be Different: And Other Stories".

Evening Class by Maeve Binchy is a well-written character-driven novel that left me with a sort of 'happy' feeling. A feeling that humanity is not so bad after all (and that's saying something from one of life's old cynics!)

There's a positive cornucopia of characters. Maybe one or two too many since, at times, I had to look back to refresh my memory about who was who. Binchy melds their disparate lives into a complete story revolving around an evening class to teach Italian. Each of the characters has a different motive for attending the evening class, and as the story continues, Signora (the class teacher around whom the story revolves) helps them discover inner strengths of which they were not aware. For different reasons, each member of the class has a goal of taking a viaggo to Italy at the end of the year. Meanwhile, despite their different backgrounds, they are beginning to form strong bonds with each other.

Evening Class was captivating and well-written but I don't feel able to offer five stars since the ending was just a little too obvious. The story's finale is something of a damp squid compared to the interest that Binchy builds during the novel. It left me hanging, wanting something more substantial.

Still an excellent read, though, and well worth the time.

As always, Maeve Binchy writes with tenderness about ordinary, appealing people leading ordinary lives. She weaves a number of characters all taking an evening class in Italian into a tapestry of juxtaposed stories and emotions. You want to keep turning pages to see what happens to everyone and to share Binchy's view of Dublin, Ireland and its denizens. More than a few tears here... touching people that you care about. I've read a lot of Maeve Binchy's books and my favorite, though, is LIGHT A PENNY CANDLE, about a child who is sent to live in Ireland during the bombing of London during World War II. I adored that book and read it several times. Binchy even managed to make the dog seem like a living, breathing, animal with personality. Try out her books if you haven't. They are great

EVENING CLASS by Maeve Binchy

Here's a book that revolves around an Irish expatriate who left her home in Ireland to live in Italy for many years, and a night class where learning Italian is the goal of it's students. EVENING CLASS by Maeve Binchy is yet another novel in which Binchy introduces us to a large cast of characters, and the reader gets to know each and every one of them in detail.

The book starts off with the story of Aidan Dunne, a very unhappy husband and father of two young adult women, who is waiting to hear if he is going to receive the promotion of school principal that he feels he most certainly deserves. When the position goes to a rival, he is instead offered the task of setting up a new nighttime adult education school, where he is allowed carte blanche. Aidan chooses to start with Italian language classes. It is a revolutionary idea, but he decides he wants to take a stab at it, and his love of Italy is obvious as he tries to make his dreams of living the life of Italy come true.

In the mean time, he needs someone who could teach the class, as well as enough pupils to keep the classes going. Enter "Signora": an Irish woman who now calls her home Italy, because many years ago the love of her life decided to return home to Italy, and she followed him, despite her family's protests. After several decades of living in a foreign country, she herself is now a foreigner in the country of her birth, a place that feels strange and uncomfortable to her. Her acceptance of the position of Italian teacher for Aidan's night school is a godsend, and she puts her heart and soul into this project.

It first appears that this is a short story collection, as Binchy introduces a new character in each new chapter. However, she chooses to make this a novel, as she winds up the short stories by bringing them all together at the very end. It is a clever gimmick, and although I think she pulled it off, I felt that she cheated a bit. This was not a true novel. Her ending was rather sloppy, I thought, but it was the happy ending I was looking for.

EVENING CLASS to me was an uplifting book, with a lot of hope and wishful thinking among the many characters. I found it one of the more enjoyable Binchy books so far that I've read, although not quite my favorite. I recommend EVENING CLASS to any Binchy fan!

Aiden Dunne is a Latin professor at Mountainview College, a less-than-fashionable school in a poor part of Dublin. Signora, a woman with a melancholy past has moved back to Dublin after living in Sicily for many years. They share a love of Italy, and circumstances put them together in planning an evening class of Italian. They fear that there will not be enough participants but 30 members show up for class and are enchanted enough with the hands-on teaching style of Signora that they stay for the duration and then have a wonderful adventure at the end of the class. Binchy writes each chapter from the point of view of a class member and cleverly intertwines the characters into a fascinating story. She makes us care about each person and writes a book which I hated to see end.

I very much enjoyed Evening Class, my third Binchy book. As a teacher myself, I saw how another one was so dedicated and enthusiastically effective. According to her bio, Binchy herself was a Latin teacher. I learned from the various characters as well: the showing of love for Mario, and the backbone of Constanza. The only character that puzzled me was Nell Dunne. She seemed to be not the least upset that her marriage was ending, that she was entirely alone, and that she would have only half the house to which she was accustomed. Why would she be interested, anyway, in a married floral delivery man, when she already had a teacher, an intellectual, a dedicated father and husband? Anyway, read the book. It makes you think.

(Dear Amazon, This book needs more than five stars. Thank you.)

This wonderful, heartwarming story revolves around an evening class and its students. Maeve Binchy does an outstanding job of portraying each character and how their lives weave in and out and connect like the most beautiful of tapestries.

I simply do not have the words to describe this book. I liked every single character. Maeve Binchy did a fantastic job - even the worst person had some redeeming qualities, but not so much that the book was nauseating and syrupy.

The members of the class form a community. They might not have met, given their different walks of life, if not for the class. The interactions the people had with one another brought out the best in all of them, and the story was an absolute joy.

As I said, I simply cannot express how great this book is. If you are looking for something that will make you feel good, to maybe help you appreciate others, perhaps to cheer you up, you will enjoy this book. It was worth the money, and I'm glad it's in my family's library.

This is the third book by Maeve Binchey I have read. The first two were collections of enjoyable short stories. What a nice suprise "Evening Class" was. I thought it was brilliant the way the author told very unique tales about unique individuals while finding a way to tie all of them together in one masterful tale. The only fault in the book may be that it was a bit hard to keep track of all the characters by the end of the story. My favorite character was Nora. It was wonderful to see Nora have such a change in her life and in herself in the second half of her life. Maeve Binchy could have written an entire book about her. Overall this is a great book and I would recommend it to anyone.

Maeve Binchy is becoming one of my favorite authors. Evening Class is the 4th Binchy book I have read, but it is not the typical Binchy book compared to Circle of Friends, Glass Lake and Echoes. I was left not really knowing the characters. Because there were so many characters, Binchy was not able to fully develop them. I did not walk away feeling like I really can relate to any of the characters. The storytelling part of the book is very grand. Binchy is truly a master to interweave so many characters together. My next one will be Light a Penny Candle!

This was the second Binchy novel I read (I have since read them all) and have noticed a pattern. Binchy's books, as one reviewer pointed out, are either wonderful or horrible. This particular publication falls to the latter. The characters are plastic, the situations boring and the whole of Signora's background histrionic. The subsequent romance is forced and - once again - Binchy's male lead is an adulterer. Worth skipping. Instead, if you want a good Binchy novel, read Tara Road or The Glass Lake.