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A Bit on the Side |
Trevor's latest collection of short stories, and as good as any previous one. Without wasting a word, Trevor creates an entire world in a very few pages and almost always leaves the reader with a sense of loss and sorrow. The first one is, I think, the most moving, although it's a hard decision to make.
(Julie Higgins - bwl 31 September 2005) |
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Cheating at Canasta |
This is a brilliant collection of short stories mostly set in rural Ireland. Bereavement, loss, fear, shame, deception, worn out relationships and the optimism of new ones are the subjects of these stories. Trevor's characters are teenagers, ordinary everyday folk, wealthier people whose lives have been changed by unexpected incidents or just the minutiae of daily life. His writing is calm and non-judgmental, leaving room for reflection. Well worth reading and immensely enjoyable.
(Diane Reeve - bwl 53 September 2009) |
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Felicia's Journey |
Felicia leaves Ireland for the Midlands with just two carrier bags and some money she has stolen. Her search for her boyfriend is hopeless until she is saved - or is she? - by plump, genial, middle-aged Mr Hilditch, a fantasist with a penchant for homeless girls. Pathetic human being, monster or both? Trevor employs his mastery of language to gradually build the tension, compelling the reader, with ever increasing dread, to turn each page.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 60 Spring 2011) |
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Last Stories |
Probably because he's Irish William Trevor is a natural storyteller having 'a way with words'. This book is a collection of ten short stories, with no obvious connection to each other and possibly spanning his long career. Written beautifully as always, with his typical insight into the human condition, there is just no need for a long novel as everything necessary is there. Perfect escapism for the extraordinary time that we are living through.
(Mary Standing - bwl 96 Spring 2020) |
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Love and Summer |
Ellie and Florian - she a lonely and nun-ridden married young woman, he a loner, the last member of a loving family - meet casually and a friendship/romance begins which lifts both their lives. The gossip which threatens in the small Irish village doesn't reach them, but still we know, even if they don't, that the relationship is impossible. The other characters in the book are all real and indispensable to the story. Trevor does it again!
(Julie Higgins - bwl 54 November 2009) |
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The Children of Dynmouth |
Nothing much happens in the sleepy seaside town of Dynmouth. Or does it? Slowly and inexorably the narrative of intrigue and blackmail builds around a dysfunctional boy from the council estate and the respectable inhabitants whose secrets he knows. Intent on gathering props for an improbable sketch for the Summer Fete, Timothy calmly terrorises his victims and as the pages turn the reader is captured too. Has Trevor ever written a bad book? I don't think so.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 68 Spring 2013) |
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The Collected Stories |
A bumper treat of more than eighty short stories, each beautifully crafted and showcasing the range and breadth of the author's fertile imagination. Maybe not for reading straight through but a delight to return to from time to time to read a story or three when a "filler" is called for.
(Sue Pratt - bwl 94 Autumn 2019) |
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The Hill Bachelors |
The pervading atmosphere of these short stories is melancholy of maybe a typically Irish kind, full of yearnings, disappointments, private secrets colouring a life-time. Each one is a gem and if I've made them sound depressing, in the end they are not (or not very!). Behind the melancholy is a deep understanding of small lives and what they are worth, written with loving insight in uncluttered, evocative prose. To be relished - they haunted me.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 80 Spring 2016) |
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The Silence in the Garden |
Summer 1904 Sarah comes to an island off Cork as governess for distant cousins. She remembers an idyllic time but 30 years later, after WW I and the Irish Civil War, she returns and uncovers the devastating events which haunt the family still living there. Told in Trevor's lyrical prose it's an absorbing read, but with a narrative that crosses time, place and characters, you need to be on the look-out for his subtle clues. It tied my book group in knots!
(Jenny Baker - bwl 98 Autumn 2020) |
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The Story of Lucy Gault |
The serenity of Trevor's writing belies the turmoil in his characters' lives. He spins a story (he is a storyteller) beginning in Southern Ireland on the brink of division. A casual incident seals the fate of one family and for the next 60 years Lucy's guilt (Gault?), love and fixation ruins all she touches. Then redemption, for her.
(Joan Jackson - bwl 16 December 2002) |
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The Story of Lucy Gault |
Ireland 1921. The country is in turmoil and the Anglo-Irish Gaults, who have lived on the Cork coast for generations, are no longer welcome. 8-year-old Lucy is deeply upset when they decide to leave and hatches a plot to make them change their minds. But a chance event thwarts her plan and has far-reaching consequences. A sad story, not entirely believable, with an unsatisfactory end. But Trevor writes beautifully and I enjoyed every minute.
(Wendy Swann - bwl 30 June 2005) |
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Two Lives: Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria |
Two haunting novellas, published under one title, tell the stories of two disparate women, one introverted, trapped in a loveless marriage, the other extroverted who knows all about the business side of love - both escape reality by taking refuge in the world of romantic fiction. Trevor insists that when writing them he had no plan to connect them, they just seemed to belong together. He's quoted as saying: "Most things in art of any kind happen by accident, and this is a case in point." A very happy accident for his fans.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 99 Winter 2021) |
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