The Copper Beech

Got the image here.

I really enjoyed reading this book, which was some sort of a surprise since I never did like Maeve Binchy's Tara Road [review later]. I fell in love, got hurt, speculated, gossiped [well, figuratively], got excited and rejoiced with the characters.

The Copper Beech, for me, was a representation of the line that goes, "you never know" . It was a story of a town, as seen by different eyes, each telling his own experiences, confessing something he did which is most of the times a secret to everybody else but the reader [me] and himself and the Copper Beech Tree. It was, as the 'teaser' [printed on the cover of the book] said it:

...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.

...the young people carve their initials and those of their loves, into the
copper beech tree in front of the school house

What I really liked in this is the way the people of Shancarrig, the village, seem to have different personalities...as it would always appear in this kind of story. I mean, on one chapter he is something...on the next, he is something else. It shows the human nature to prejudge someone...or postjudge someone...and thus forming different 'generalizations' of that someone. [I am sorry if I am being vague.]

I loved the fact that no one would really know it all but the copper beech tree and me [of course]. Haha. Ü

All in all: Loved it. Better than Tara Road.