William Trevor

[nonsuch]

He's adjacent to Rose Tremaine on my shelves and not far from Anne Tyler, so he's in good company and well-merited too. My favourite is Two Lives, which either won or was shortlisted for the Booker in 1991. But I began with The Childen of Dynmouth years ago and recently picked up a library throwout of Felicia's Journey (1994). Lucy Gault, the latest, doesn't quite come off for me.

Mostly the setting is Ireland and the novels focus on an unfortunate heroine, one who has frequently been sheltered by her stern religious background and comes to grief in the big wide world, almost inevitably in the love department. Felicia's Journey deals with a girl's travel to England in search of a fiance who has abandoned her. She is preyed upon by a terrifyingly real sexual pervert who 'shelters' her, and even in her innocence returns to him after escaping from the clutches of a religious sect.

Trevor is a master of providing tension, a great storyteller.

[megustaleer]

I love Trevor's books.
Like you I started with Children Of Dynmouth, and I think that is my favourite, with <strike>Lucy Gault</strike>* Felicia's Journey coming a close second. I love the slow build up of menace in both of them...the feeling that, although nothing is obviously wrong on the surface, there is something deeply unpleasant going on just out of sight.

*Must think before posting :dunce:

[nonsuch]

His short stories are also pretty good. The News from Ireland collection particularly impressed me. Afraid I gave up on Lucy Gault, though. Perhaps I'd had too much of lost children after MacEwan. Now we have the Maddie case - what an opportunity for a sensational faction novel!

[megustaleer]

Embarrassed at the mistaken title given in my previous post - Lucy Gault is actually the least memorable of the books I've read by Trevor. I suspect that I enjoyed it for the quality of the writing, rather than the plot. I meant Felicia's Journey, which has a gradually increasing feeling of both menace and sadness.

Trevor has written about the abduction of an infant in Death In Summer.

I'm not a great short-story fan, so have only read the two that make up Two Lives, ( Reading Turgenev, and Matilda's England).

[nonsuch]

Felicia's Journey is a masterpiece, and Lucy Gault a big disappointment to me. I especially like Trevor's teasing openings, the details of Felicia's posssessions, the pencilling in of her nervous departure, her grilling at the security building. Already the tension is being built up. In Reading Turgenev another lone woman 'slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in the corner' [I quote from the book, not memory!]

Trevor is never afraid to 'tell' to give needed information, helpful hints en passant, sometimes sitting back to describe: 'Mr Hidditch weighs nineteen and a half stone [And here's accuracy for you], a total that has been steady for more than a dozen years, rarely increasing or decreasing by as much as a pound.' Menace, weight, precision lie in those details, a sense of a threatening, overpowering obsessive character.

Will he write another and will it be as good as Felicia's Journey?

[whatnot]

In Reading Turgenev another lone woman 'slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in the corner' [I quote from the book, not memory!]

I have the book beside me and you got it spot on! (Except it's a corner, not the corner, but we'll let you away with that one! ;) )

[nonsuch]

A diamond in the trash can. My local library has round-the-year sales of books that nobody wants anymore and there's often treasure at the bottom of the sink. Death in Summer (1998) is Trevor at his best, casually slipping from the central consciousness's trivial thoughts and obsessions into moments of real significance. The montage is as seamless as in a Virginia Woolf novel. What I love about him is the way he gets under the skin of 'ordinary' people, using simple and at times colloquial language. But unlike Woolf there's always some terrible threat the reader intuitively suspects will end tragically - you know, if you know Trevor, that all this kindness and concern is too good to be true.

I've not yet finished the book - I know when I'm faced with good writing that I must slow down and savour it, often re-reading pages, going away for a few hours and thinking about them. Here is the kindly Albert helping his landlady, Mrs Biddle, a poor arthritic old soul who is terrified of being taken over by social services:

Albert says it takes all sorts. He stacks the dishes Mrs Biddle has eaten from, making room on a tray for the metal teapot she has herself carried to her room. For a moment he worries, reminded by the teapot of her picking her steps from the kitchen, shuffling dangerously along, the teapot's handle wrapped in a cloth where the black plastic binding fell off years ago. A trip and she could be scalded, lying there while he's out or asleep. But when Mrs Biddle decides to make her own tea she will not be moved from doing so.

And Albert has already shown amazing compassion for a disabled man who suffered from elephantiasis - and subsequently died in his armchair. Albert went to his funeral, joining a few neighbours - the dead man had no friends or family. One doesn't trust Albert; but one trusts Trevor.

[MisterHobgoblin]

I’ve read a number of William Trevor novels and stories and, I’m afraid, not that many have stuck in my mind. Most recently I read Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel and I can’t really remember very much about it. To my astonishment, I later found it had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

But three that have lodged to varying extents are The Children of Dynmouth; Felicia’s Journey; and The Story of Lucy Gault. Of these, I rate Felicia’s Journey very highly indeed. As you read it, there is not a word out of place. Not a single sentence needs rereading; there is nothing to cause a stumble. It is pristine without ever being flowery. And amongst this smooth, gentle writing there emerges a situation of utter hopelessness. For a brief time, the reader can share Felicia’s hope that she will find her man, explain her situation, and live happily ever after. Mr Hilditch is drawn very subtly. He is comfortable, cosy, satisfied. There is nothing rushed or desperate about him, and we believe that he might be able to help Felicia. But as it becomes apparent that he won’t he helping Felicia, we realize too that Felicia’s situation is hopeless anyway. She is a lost soul, at the mercy of the world. Mr Hilditch is just the man who sees the opportunity and takes it – if he didn’t then someone else would.

Yet, for the lack of horns and forked tail, Mr Hilditch is one of the creepiest bad guys around. The extent of the double life – respected worker, valued neighbour, unthreatening demeanour – makes the sleaziness; the deception; the violence all the more difficult to reconcile. Taking Felicia to hospital, apparently to visit his dying wife, seems far worse than any act of violence that Mr Hilditch might perform. Pretending to be in grief whilst making lewd comments to the waitress with his back turned to Felicia is tawdriness in the extreme.

And at the denouement, even though we expect the violence, have watched Mr Hilditch preparing the ground for it, it is written with such immediacy that it is exciting, gripping.

I just find it puzzling that William Trevor can write such a memorable, vivid, perfect book yet fill his catalogue with so much that leaves so little impression.

[Adrian]

The only William Trevor story I've read is Men of Ireland (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/03/21/050321fi_fiction), available online in the link at that wonderful magazine, The New Yorker. I read it ages ago and always meant to read more by him.

The Russian Riviera (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/30/050530fi_fiction) is also worth checking out, as is that one by Louise Erdrich that I can't find right now.

ETA: found the Louise Erdrich story: it's Gleason (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/03/20/060320fi_fiction)

[nonsuch]

I just find it puzzling that William Trevor can write such a memorable, vivid, perfect book yet fill his catalogue with so much that leaves so little impression.

Spot on about Felicia's Journey, Hobgoblin. I can't understand why Trevor, winner of so many awards, has never actually won Booker. As for the unmemorability of much of his work, I tend to agree. While reading, one is transfixed, but only one or two characters, like Hilditch or Felicia, remain in the memory. His characters are so very 'ordinary' that one forgets them; they don't do anything exceptional or have profound thoughts or any literary or philosophical background. They are often strays with peculiar obsessions or impossible ambitions.

I have just finished Death in Summer and, as usual with Trevor, was captivated by the way we learn gradually about the quirks of simple ordinary people . . . but I ofen had to re-read to find out who's who, unravelling Trevor's eccentric shifts in the thought processes of main and even minor characters. He moves so adroitly from expository narrative, to thought process to actual dialogue to recalled dialogue and characters' suppositions about suppositions that the common reader could well become confused or even exasperated. But, as a lover of James and Proust, I enjoy all this. Somewhere 'out there' the plot is moving forward, I feel I'm in safe hands, meanwhile enjoying the sheer banality of what is after all pretty ordinary unpretentious everyday language, prose so simple but somehow made rich because we are inside a unique human being, one who may be old or round the bend but we understand and, during the story, sympathise.

In Death in Summer initially I thought Albert was 'too good to be true' and in my mind thought he'd be revealed as a minor Hilditch with evil egotistic intentions, but not a bit of it. He remained essentially good and altruistic to the last, although only the reader and possibly Thaddeus (another 'good' character) seemed to realise it. In real life Albert would be the sort of chap you edged away from, his banalities and repetitions boring the pants off you, but in the book he's a delight.

(Edit: I've 'spoilered' this, nonsuch, so that new readers can make their own assessment of his character before reading yours. megustaleer.)

[Flingo]

With thanks to The Book Club Bible (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Club-Bible-Definitive-Member/dp/1843172690), we have chosen Lucy Gault for our next book club read. Maybe I should have read this thread first having seen your negative comments. I'm hoping that because none of us have anything to compare it to, it'll be ok! I'll let you know what we think.

[MisterHobgoblin]

I enjoyed Lucy Gault - I don't think it is as good as Felicia's journey, but most books aren't. I think there should be plenty to discuss - not least of which is what it would have been like to be in Lucy Gault's position or her parents' position.

[Flingo]

Thanks MrHG - that's what I was hoping, but it's reassuring to hear it too.

[megustaleer]

Felicia's Journey is to William Trevor as The Remains of The Day is to Kazua Ishiguro - Having been captivated by those novels the reader is never quite as enthralled by their other books

[nonsuch]

Felicia's Journey is to William Trevor as The Remains of The Day is to Kazua Ishiguro - Having been captivated by those novels the reader is never quite as enthralled by their other books

Too true, alas! But I keep hoping and enjoy every new or old work, even when like Other People's Worlds (1980) I know I'll never read it again. OPW hasn't won any prizes or been nominated for any, and it isn't like to be. It reads nonetheless like vintage Trevor - full of small concealed horrors in the lives of ordinary people. Everyone has secrets and everyone needs to put on masks in their quotidian existence in order to retain a sense of dignity and self-worth. We all deceive ourselves and each other - that is Trevor's (and of course many another writer's) message. But at some crisis point in our life that deeply buried life secret will be, in Trevor's novels, revealed and that is when havoc is caused. We read his work with this in mind, waiting for and fearing the worst. It happens usually not in the way we expect, but like a blow of fortune coming from afar.

Other People's Worlds is not a great Trevor novel, but it gives a clue to the later more sophisticated works like Felicia's Journey and Death in Summer. For a start the title too heavily announces the dominant issue. Then there are so many tricky switches of action and point of view, backstories and potted biographies, so many that occasional re-reading is almost de rigueur.

I picked up the novel last summer in a marvellously chaotic second-hand bookshop in Halifax, Nova Scotia. No point retelling the plot, but the central character, the touchstone of evil, as it were, is a compulsive fantasist, an actor and plausible seducer, as charming and devious a rogue as any other in Trevor. I'd read anything by Trevor, the seductive storyteller, but this one is strictly for the aficianado. I'd like to retitle it 'Acts of Love.'

[nonsuch]

Correction - Other People's Worlds is very much on a par with Felicia's Journey.. True, there's no innocent heroine to identify with, but in Francis Tyte we have the perfect villain, not quite as threatening as Hilditch perhaps, but just as obsessive and seductive as he goes quietly about his business of dominating unsuspecting women, whom he collects like butterflies. OPW also has a wider range of types than FJ, and although we do not fear for the heroine in anything like the same way, we delve into so many consciousnesses that the fictional world is richer and more varied.

What Other People's Worlds valuably demonstrates is that each person - shopgirl, schoolgirl, seamstress or whatever - has his or her own obsessions, worries and priorities, and these only contingently coincide with those of other people - hence the title. Moreover, although we make suplicatory and sympathetic noises towards others we are frequently at the same time lost in our own reveries, dreaming of pasts and futures that never were or will be. Thus an actor like Francis Tyte not only plays roles in TV commercials and has minor parts in screen melodramas, but lives a vicarious life playing with other people and fitting them into his own fantasies, putting them into his own dramas of the head, making them all unwitting actors in the performance which is his own life. The 'real' person is thus hard to find, never quite present, always drifting away in some cerebral time and space. Yes, one feels, we are all like Francis in a way, but we hope we are more stable and less liable to damage others - or, if we do, unlike Francis, we will regret it for the rest of our lives. I still think it ought to have be called 'Acts of Love,' both nouns having at least dual connotations.

[Jenmcd]

Hae only read Lucy Gault and absolutely loved it. Evokes the area its set in (my favourite part of Ireland) beautifully.

[Cassie]

Lucy Gault was the first William Trevor I discovered and I loved it. Have since read The Children of Dynmouth, The Hill Batchelors and Bodily Secrets and hoping to read many more. I have Felicias Journey on TBR. His prose is beautiful and haunting, his observation of the ordinary often leaves the hairs standing on the back of my neck. I can understand that some people don't get him, but he will always be near the top of my favourite authors list. It must be my Celtic blood.

[nonsuch]

Lucy Gault was the first William Trevor I discovered and I loved it. Have since read The Children of Dynmouth, The Hill Batchelors and Bodily Secrets and hoping to read many more. I have Felicias Journey on TBR. His prose is beautiful and haunting, his observation of the ordinary often leaves the hairs standing on the back of my neck. I can understand that some people don't get him, but he will always be near the top of my favourite authors list. It must be my Celtic blood.

Great to hear your respose to Trevor. You have many treats in store. You don't need 'Celtic blood' either to be thrilled and haunted by him.

[Cassie]

You have many treats in store.
And really looking forward to all of them. Must decide soon which to read next.