Please verify that you are not a robot. Would you also like to submit a review for this item? You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: 1 2 3 4 5. Preview this item Preview this item. They say that if you go out on St. Agnes' Eve and look into the lake at sunset you can see your future. But beneath its serene surface, the lake harbors secrets as dark and unfathomable as the beautiful woman who night after night walks beside its waters.
Lough Glass is home to Kit McMahon, in a way it will never be to her lovely mother, Helen, who does not fit in with the ways of the people of Lough Glass, and who found an unlikely mate in the genial pharmacist Martin McMahon.
Kit adores her mother, but can't escape the picture of her, alone at the kitchen table, tears streaming down her face Then one terrible night Martin's boat is found drifting upside down in the lake. The night Helen is lost. The night Kit discovers a letter on Martin's pillow and burns it, unopened, in the grate. The night everything changes forever. Read more Show all links. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private.
Save Cancel. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Lough Glass is at the heart and soul of the namesake town clinging to its shore.
Reviews User-contributed reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Tags Add tags for "The glass lake". Country life -- Ireland -- Fiction. Lakes -- Ireland -- Fiction. Secrecy -- Fiction. Ireland -- Fiction. Country life. Mothers and daughters. All rights reserved. Please sign in to WorldCat Don't have an account?
Remember me on this computer. Cancel Forgot your password? Paperback , pages. More Details Original Title. Lough Glass Ireland. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Glass Lake , please sign up. Since Kit's mother disappears from their small town, the story peeks my interest.
Does Helen's disappearing change how others in the town live? Look forward to reading this book, Rita Redmond Parvey. Suzanne Cooper Yes it does. Particularly Sister Madeleine. Read it, you'll like it. See 1 question about The Glass Lake…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Glass Lake. Similar to other Binchy novels, this book is set in a rural Irish village in the s, as well as London.
It is notable as the last of Binchy's novels to be set in the s. The story focuses on Kit McMahon and her relationship with her mother with the story spanning about a decade. Binchy explores the roles of women in Irish society, inconstant lovers, and uses an operatic plot to hold a reader's attention. Aug 02, Limonessa rated it liked it Recommends it for: women who love too much.
Shelves: adult-fiction. The story - my first Maeve Binchy book ever - is set in the 50s and revolves around the lives of various families in the small village of Lough Glass, Ireland, during a span of about 10 years.
Among this rather extensive set of characters, stars Helen McMahon alias Lena Gray, a desperate woman whose 2. Among this rather extensive set of characters, stars Helen McMahon alias Lena Gray, a desperate woman whose actions, bad judgement and wrong choices in life reverberate throughout the existence of so many people, and with rather unsettling outcomes.
It is basically a book which deals with the concept of MISTAKE and how your actions may or may not reflect on other people's lives and with which consequences. This, per se, is a rather interesting theme to be treated in a novel, if not for the fact the the gloomy approach and the disastrous ways in which the characters messed up their lives didn't make this book relaxing or enjoyable at any time.
It would be actually pretty safe to say that this book is exhausting, emotionally and physically. First, it is well above pages and the action is so slow at times that I felt like I was trying to slowly make my way through quicksand. You won't fall asleep, I swear, and you won't be bored by long descriptions about the nuances of color of the lake in November or on the types of plants growing around it, but you will feel the progress of narration so slow and uneventful, so much so that, if not for one cardinal point which I will explain below, it would have been enough to make me shut the book at page She is, without a doubt, the most conflicted character of the book.
Throughout the story I couldn't help but despise her for her weaknesses and for what she brought upon herself and her family because of her stupidity but, at the same time, I couldn't help but admire her. And this is where some things about her actually don't add up.
I was baffled by how she seems to be two persons. First we meet a ghost of a woman who once was, then we meet the monster who did what no woman on her right mind would ever do and, then we meet the stakhanovist working woman and eventually the remorseful mother. So, what's it going to be? Who is Lena? How can a woman who seems to be able to organize everybody's lives so perfectly and be the catalyst to their happiness, simultaneously be a wreck and helpless about her own life?
How am I supposed to feel sympathy for a woman who abandoned her children and let's not forget that even if she makes contact with Kit, she never does with Emmet? I just can't. I can admire her qualities and her skills for building a career for herself out of nothing, but I cannot justify or forget her horrible actions and selfishness.
As you sow, so you shall reap. And last but not least, the reasons for Lena's love for Louis were extra feeble, if not inexistent. WHY does she love him? Because he's good-looking? You can't base your love on appearances, take a look at the celebrities. That is left unanswered. Amazingly enough, very few of the rest of the characters were likable. Even Kit, Lena's daughter, makes an enormous mistake early in the book which changes everything. Clio, Emmet, Martin, Ivy, Kevin This book is en emotional disaster, slowly developing in front of your eyes.
The only ONE character whom I found remotely likable, Sister Madeleine, makes a mistake, gets taken out of the book in 2 pages, never to return again. We never discover her past, her background. A bit wasted, if you ask me. Finally, Kit and Stevie. That relationship smells like a week old dead fish.
Kit the virtuous manages to reform the village rake? Sorry, but life taught me that a leopard cannot change its spots. There might be exceptions but I thought it was all very abrupt, there was not enough development of the matter to justify such undying love on both parts. Ah, did I mention that the story is incredibly predictable? On to the good parts: I am still marveling at the writer's ability to write a page book with no descriptions.
THIS is the reason why, earlier on, I said you won't fall asleep. And it totally works. I was there, in Lough Glass, with the characters, taking walks around the lake or on the streets of Dublin, picturing everything. Picturing something the author actually barely describes. So either I have a fervent imagination or there must be some skill on the author's part.
Even though I hated half the characters, thought the plot was predictable and the image of woman portrayed in these pages is so terribly wrong on so many levels, I could not close the book and set it aside. The plot is engaging and once I read the last page, I really felt emotionally drained. That alone must count for something. Thanks to Maja and Flannery for suggesting this as my first Maeve Binchy book.
Now I know you hate me. View all 46 comments. This is the second Binchy book I read after her "Quentins" which turned out to be just perfect.. Aug 15, Alexandra Ray rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: everyone.
Shelves: favorites , books-i-own. This is the story of lives, lives affected by secrets and lies and choices made by a handful of people. We watch as the consequences of those choices shape the lives of so many people over a span of about ten years. Naturally for a story that has to span that amount of time, it took some time also to get into it.
It took at least pages which isn't much considering how long it is and a couple hundred more before I absolutely could not put I It took at least pages which isn't much considering how long it is and a couple hundred more before I absolutely could not put it down. I thought this was an incredible concept, because it's so real. This is a book about real life - with some dramatization, obviously.
This is not a story about horrible events that are tied up in a pretty little bow in the matter of a few days, weeks, months. No, this is about the effects over years, because that's how long choices affect people - years, lifetimes even. At first I was not fond of the writing style, broken up into sometimes tiny segments of certain povs. Those povs could be main characters or characters only mentioned a few times in the story. But as the book progressed, I came to realize just how essential that was for the purpose that Binchy was trying to accomplish.
I realized how brilliant it was, that every single part, no matter how inconsequential each piece seemed at the time, was crucial to the entire story. If you skip those seemingly small bits, you will miss out on the ultimate point of the story and only see it in a shallow, maybe even dull form.
Beyond the theme of choices and consequences, Binchy also explores different types of romances. I stress the word romance, because it is made clear in this book that romance does not mean love. There were only a couple of romance plot lines that are considered true love.
She really does span most every type of relationship in this novel - brilliantly. The length was most definitely needed to do that, and while it was imposing and daunting when I opened the book to the first page, as I finished reading the last I knew that if it was any shorter it would not have been as meaningful. Which it was. It left me thinking well into the night.
I finished at 1AM this morning and could not get to sleep at least until 3 because I could not stop thinking about all that had happened. There are some characters that I can gush over. I could gush for days about how much I love Stevie Sullivan, but I shall spare you and wait until I see the person who recommended this book to me to do that.
I could gush over how much I want to give Emmet McMahon the biggest hug in the world. I could go on and on about how much I admire Kit McMahon and how she handled her life after making one of the worst mistakes anyone could make - burning a letter of explanation that her mother left to her father after she left him.
I admire her adult decisions and how those decisions affected so many people in a good way, which in my eyes was an unconscious atonement for her burning the letter. An atonement very similar to that of her mother, Lena Gray, who spent her life after leaving her children changing so many people's lives for the better that it was sometimes too easy to overlook the fact that she left her children in the first place.
There are times when it is very easy to despise Lena, but it is very easy to love her too. She's a character who placed her heart in the wrong hands, and she paid the ultimate price for it. Her's is truly a tragic tale, and that is because it was her own fault and she knew that. And on that note, there are quite a few characters who I would like nothing more than too punch them in the face view spoiler [ which thank god actually happens to the most deserving of them hide spoiler ].
There are the shallow people, the snooty people, the people who can't see beyond their mirror. There were also the side characters who were lovely and interesting and I wanted nothing but the best for them, view spoiler [like Sister Madeleine and Phillip O'Brien no matter how often he tended to stick his foot in his own mouth and Maura Hayes and Martin McMahon and Ivy Brown hide spoiler ]. It would be easy to say that every type of person is represented somehow in this book, but of course that is not true as much as it isn't possible.
I think this book will haunt me for years to come. Though half way through I couldn't see myself giving it more than 4 stars, I give it 5 now because of that fact alone - it will haunt me in the best way possible. The end made me yearn to see these characters again. I hope that I'll be able to find it at my local book store and sit it on my book shelf so I can return to Lough Glass as often as I want.
View all 6 comments. May 17, Amy Hillis rated it really liked it. I love me some Maeve Binchy. When I read her books, I want to be Irish, own a pub, and live in a tiny town. I can hardly read one of her books without developing a fierce hankering for corned beef and cabbage.
In typical Binchy style - we're immediately drawn into the life of a simple family in a largely nondescript - yet still engaging - town. In this book, a mother struggles continuing life in her family and she makes a choice that changes her husband, children, and self forever. A simple choi I love me some Maeve Binchy.
A simple choice has dramatic ramifications that no one could have predicted. Uhhh, that sounds pretty much like the unhelpful little description on the back of every book. I don't want to spoil anything.
If you're looking for a rainy day, light read that will have you contemplating how you would chose to escape your own life View 2 comments.
Set in the s in London and Ireland, following the lives of a mother and daughter through thick and thin. Jun 09, Suzanne rated it it was amazing Shelves: want-to-read-again. I read this many years ago, I will endeavour to read it again this year. This was a haunting tale of a woman deeply unhappy and a poor husband left to pick up the pieces for the rest of his family. One of the first Maeve's books I read. I really do enjoy re-reading these books as it brings back memories from my teenage years and it's nice to rekindle the memories of my first 'grown up' books I tackled.
I love revisiting them for this reason, but mostly as I simply adore this author's work! I wanted it to be a cool fall day, so I could curl up with this book and a pot of tea in a big, comfy chair. I felt as if I lived alongside the characters. Do I recommend this one? Yes, I think I do. This is one of my all-time favourite books - I think partly because of how it got me through what could have been an awful travel day. I picked it up as bulk paperback at the Ottawa airport just before Christmas in, I think, I had never heard of Maeve Binchy, but it was a fat novel and I was pretty sure it was going to be a long day, as I was flying back to visit my family in northern BC, and it was one of those awful Canadian winters.
My plane ended up having to detour through Toronto, th This is one of my all-time favourite books - I think partly because of how it got me through what could have been an awful travel day.
My plane ended up having to detour through Toronto, then once we made it across Canada, we were stranded in Vancouver overnight. When we finally left Vancouver, we couldn't land in my hometown, but ended up flying into Prince Rupert, and being bussed for 2. It should have been terrible, but I just luxuriated in this novel. It was a like a day out of time. I reached the final pages just as I reached the outskirts of town, and was astonished to believe that I had hardly noticed all the inconveniences of the trip.
I've come back to this novel again and again over the years. I love the interesting but imperfect characters, the story line that splits into two locations Lough Glass and London and then meanders together again, and most of all, Helen.
I know Kit is the heroine, but Helen is a fascinating character - a rare woman who owns her choices and I think in the end, would have done it all over again. View 1 comment. Dec 20, Claire rated it it was amazing. It was so engrossing and enthralling and all those over adjectives that start with e. The main character was so relatable, and I especially enjoyed her tumultuous friendship with Clio - it was so realistic.
But really, I just love how Binchy writes. The way she skips from scene to scene keeps you interested. And, SUCH satisfying ending. Nov 04, Abbylockhart rated it it was amazing. I feel lina as a differ i have read this book more than once,it is probably my favourite.
I feel lina as a different woman than helen, as if i am reading about two different women. Not that i agree with what she did, but it is given so nicely and naturally ,that i can relate to her. The only thing that bothered me was the ending. Nevertheless, a great book. May 30, Marilyn rated it it was amazing. Maeve Binchy is a wonderful story teller. This is along complicated family tale. Her characters are so real that you can reach out and touch them.
I recommend Maeve Binchy to whomever wants to be lost in a book. Sep 22, Laura rated it it was amazing. I first read this book in the early s and haven't been able to stop reading it. I read it in full at least once a year but routinely just go back to read specific chapters all the time.
I find I've gotten different things out of the book each time I read it. This title will remain on my shelf for years to come. Aug 25, Dem rated it liked it Shelves: irish-history-fiction.
Review to follow.
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