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    The Copper Beech
    Unavailable
    The Copper Beech
    Unavailable
    The Copper Beech
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    The Copper Beech

    Written by Maeve Binchy

    Narrated by Fionnula Flanagan

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young people carve their initials--and those of their loves-into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 5, 2000
    ISBN9780553528480
    Unavailable
    The Copper Beech

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    Reviews for The Copper Beech

    3.5/5

    386 ratings18 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Another great Binchy read. Takes place in Schancarrig, a small Irish town. Binchy’s characters are unique and well-developed. Lots of secrets are revealed. Themes are family, friendship and relationships. At the end of Maeve’s books, you always want more about her characters but she just lets you write your own endings! Looking forward to the next book from our beloved Binchy. If you haven’t read any of her books, you need to read them now!
    • 4/5
      A small town in Ireland whose thriving center in the old school house is put up for sale. Memories flood back to all of those who went there and life in the town.
    • 5/5
      Another very good read by Maeve Binchy. She always transports you to a bygone time and and a bygone Ireland. The stories from the different characters interweave well and give you a feeling of the village in which the story takes place. It is always a pleasure to read one of her books. 4.5 Stars.
    • 4/5
      Characters and lives interwoven as leaves on a tree.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of the village of Shancarrig in Ireland told through the eyes of villagers and others whose lives crossed the school. Much of the action focuses somewhat on the village school and its beech tree upon which names had been carved over the years. There is a great deal of overlap in the stories as each person's life intersected with someone else's at some point. While I cannot identify a specific problem with the writing, it's a book that just failed to engage me as a reader. It may have been a matter of trying to read it at the wrong point in my life. It may have been the overlap in the stories. It may have been that each story had its own chapter, that the chapters were longer than they are in many books, and that there just weren't enough "breaking points." I really don't know. I did manage to stick with it, although it just took me about four times as long as it should have taken to get through.
    • 4/5
      My daughter Laurie has previously mentioned this favorite author and when she died July 30, 2012, Laurie told this book was her favorite Binchy novel so I read it. It tells of kids who go to a village school, and how they proceed to emerge from ht trials aof their youth. Some do wll, others less well, but all the accounts are full of interest and many are highly poignant. Especially movind was an accoun of a child lving in the village with her aunt anduncle and who feeared her father in Chicago would come and take her with him away from her Irish home. Some of the lives of the characters are filled with darkness. The school, by the epnymous tree, is sold at the end of the book and who will get it is a source of tension. A thouralghy engaging and ofen highly poignant book, very easy to read
    • 5/5
      In the Irish town of Shancarrig, the young people carve their intials - and those of the people that they love - into the trunk of an ancient copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even the parish priest, Father Gunn, who knows everything that goes on behind closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid town is as it seems.Unexpected passions and fear are bringing together so many people; the handsome new priest and Miss Ross, the shy, beautiful school teacher, Leonora, the privileged daughter of one of the town's richest families and Foxy Dunne, whose father did time in jail. There is also Nessa Ryan, whose parents own Ryan's Hotel, and two very different young men. For now the secrets deep in Shancarrig's shadows are being revealed, from innocent vanities and hidden loves, to crimes of the heart and murder.I really enjoyed this book. I had read it several years ago as well and loved it then as well. I give it an A+!
    • 2/5
      I usually like Maeve Binchy's books, but I couldn't get into this one for some reason. It's written from the point of view of various members of a school class, and though many stories are told I found it difficult to care about the characters. Not one of her best.
    • 5/5
      This was a magnificent book written in a simple, yet evocative language. The way everyone's lives are interconnected is demonstrated in this serious of touching stories about life in a small Irish town. The thread that knits the sttories together is the old Copper Beech tree at Shancarrig school where students carve their names.As we read each character's story, the life of the town emerges into our conciousness. This book shows that every place, no matter how drab, has a story and that we can never know what is happening in the life of another.I was touched to the quick by this story and had trouble putting it down. A tale that will remain in my memory forever.I would recommend this book to anyone....
    • 3/5
      Yet another masterpiece by my favorite Irish author. Heartwarming story of Shancarrig, a place where lives and loves intertwine under the shade of the magnificent copper beech. It was especially touching for me, because my three-month-old son has Down Syndrome, and so throughout the book my heart went out to Maura and Michael. I think that Binchy portrayed Michael exceptionally well - she didn't make him seem less or more than what he was, which is how I want people to see my son, as just another little boy, special in his own way.She presents each chapter from a different character's viewpoint. Amazingly, the reader falls in and out of love with characters, depending upon what other characters say about them. I was surprised to discover that I liked some of the characters who seemed so unlovable! But, like Atticus Finch says in To Kill a Mockingbird, (paraphrased) "you can't really understand someone else unless you've stood in their shoes." What a truism, and really, something that Binchy reminds us of in this beautifully written book.
    • 4/5
      The Copper Beech features a series of vignettes elucidating the lives of people who live in a small, Irish town. The titular tree figures prominently in most of their lives. As the stories unfold, the reader learns more about how these people's lives are intertwined and what they think of each other, dropping juicy tidbits and clues to a central mystery of what's going on in Leo's family. When her story is finally told, it feels like a pay-off. I really enjoyed reading this. I'm not terribly familiar with this author, though of course I've heard of her and have several of her books on my shelves. I was expecting this to be a romance, and while there are definitely some characters who enter into relationship with each other, it's not a typical 'two main characters fall in love with each other" kind of romance book.
    • 5/5
      I love all of Maeve Binchey's, including this one, The Copper Beech. Each chapter in this book is an expanded vignette of a character.I loved all of them with the exception of Richard, a spolier fellow who almost got his way with any girls he picked but I like how his life disappointed him.I loved the story of Eddie Barton who pressed flowers and was extremely sensitive and modest. The one of Maura Brenan who wanted to be like her school teacher, gets pregnant and abandoned after marriage and the birth of Down's syndrome boy. Maura never really had love until she had the baby and gave her son love which he returned to her and he loved the town too.Most poignant was Leo or Lenora Murphy, her life crippled by mean mother and an ignoring father, was to endure horrible years haunted by her parents secret that she never wanted to a part of. The worst of it was that she could never tell the full story to anyone.There are many more characters and the wonderful old beech tree near the school house where most carved their initials and hopes.
    • 3/5
      Nice. It's what I've come to think of as typical Binchy, since I started reading her lately. Not *too* much incomprehensible dialect, and definitely sweeter than Circle of Friends - more HEAs and less vengeance. Still, don't fall in love with any particular character, because there's no way of predicting which is going to get a happy or sad future.

      One thing I noticed in this Binchy is that some characters are awfully slow learners - they could have a happier life if they chose to. Binchy seems to have a fairly strong sense of fate, and of the good shall be rewarded. But... that's my American perspective, probably. For rural Catholic Irish, circa 1930-70, she was probably fairly progressive.
    • 4/5
      'The Copper Beech' is a series of interwoven character studies, which tell different parts of a story of a small town community in Ireland, in the middle and late twentieth century. It opens with the description of a large beech tree, which gives shade in the grounds of a primary school. The school is being honoured with a visit from the Bishop, and we meet several characters from the town including some mischievous children.

      There are then several sections, each written from the perspective of one of the people in the town. They usually start in the person's childhood, showing their upbringing and introducing some of their friends. There are ongoing threads too - who marries whom? Will Maura get her dream of a house of her own? What happens in Leo's family that makes her draw back from the rest of the community?

      It's very well written, with excellent characterisations. Perhaps a bit slow-moving at times, and certainly no great excitement or intrigue, but for someone like me who enjoys reading about people, a very enjoyable book.

      Previously read once, about ten years before.
    • 1/5
      Just didn't capture my interest, although I like a lot of her other works
    • 4/5
      Whoever wrote that this was "60 pages, you can read it all in an easy sitting", must have been reading the first section ("Shancarrig School"), not the whole novel, which includes a further eight sections, looking at life from the perspectives of eight young people who left the school in the same year. The eponymous Copper Beech actually plays a relatively small part in their tales, its simply a hook on which to hang the twists and turns of growing up and adulthood, told with Binchy's extraordinary empathy for 'ordinary' people and how unordinary they really are.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of small town anywhere. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone keeps tabs on what is going on, which is why I really loved the way this book is written, because each little story about one character overlaps in the way it should for people in a small town. This was a quick book to read and I really enjoyed the interactions of the characters and the crossing of the lives of the kids as they grew and changed. Some times I was moved, some times I was so angry at a character I wanted to smack them, some times I was smiling ear to ear as a character overcame some low point in their lives to move beyond what was expected and into something wonderful. That is life anywhere and it was enjoyable to see it so well handled here.
    • 4/5
      The Copper Beech, by Maeve Binchy, is a loving portrait of a rural Irish village told through the lives of its ordinary town folk over a twenty-five year period from the mid-1940s to 1970. There are eight main characters and almost a whole village worth of other secondary characters. If there is one minor fault with this book, it is that readers may find it difficult to keep track of all the names and relationships. At the novel’s core is a huge copper beech tree that stands in front of the old schoolhouse. At some moment in each character’s story, this beech tree takes on an important role.Each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view, and each forms a delightful and complete story in itself. Subsequent chapters dealing with other characters’ lives, manage artfully and subtly—often by mere happenstance—to reveal relevant information about previous characters and events. This new information makes the reader reevaluate and reassess what actually may have occurred in previous chapters. Thus the chapters intertwine artfully to create a unified whole. In addition, we manage to see many of the same events from entirely different perspectives. Overall, this book was a very satisfying reading experience—a slow novel, with considerable emphasis on realistic character development. Binchy is a master storyteller. In this work, her prose is unpretentious and easy-going, giving the reader the experience of being there, in the village, hearing a series of stories told by a sage old timer. The author is at her best when she delves into the interior emotions of her characters—their hopes, dreams, insecurities, sorrows, fears, and disillusionments. But overall with this book, it is not the characters one falls in love with, but the town. In many ways this novel is a loving lament for a place and time that is vanishing all too quickly in this pace-paced modern world. This is one of those rare novels that I did not want to end—I wanted the author to continue telling us about the lives of each and every person is Shancarrig and carrying their stories right up to the present day—obviously an impossible task. But the author did manage to put a satisfactory ending on this heart-warming tale, and I closed the last page with a profound feeling of peace, love for humanity, and a twinge of grief for the imaginary people of Shancarrig that I would visit no more.