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The Story of Lucy Gault
The stunning new novel from highly acclaimed author William Trevor is a brilliant, subtle, and moving story of love, guilt, and forgiveness. The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of violence leads the parents of nine-year-old Lucy to decide to leave for England, her mother's home. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane, their country house with its beautiful land and nearby beach, and a dog she has befriended. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away, hoping to convince her parents to stay. Instead, she sets off a series of tragic misunderstandings that affect all of Lahardane's inhabitants for the rest of their lives.
Audiobook
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
William Trevor
186 books793 followersWilliam Trevor, KBE grew up in various provincial towns and attended a number of schools, graduating from Trinity College, in Dublin, with a degree in history. He first exercised his artistry as a sculptor, working as a teacher in Northern Ireland and then emigrated to England in search of work when the school went bankrupt. He could have returned to Ireland once he became a successful writer, he said, "but by then I had become a wanderer, and one way and another, I just stayed in England ... I hated leaving Ireland. I was very bitter at the time. But, had it not happened, I think I might never have written at all."
In 1958 Trevor published his first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, to little critical success. Two years later, he abandoned sculpting completely, feeling his work had become too abstract, and found a job writing copy for a London advertising agency. 'This was absurd,' he said. 'They would give me four lines or so to write and four or five days to write it in. It was so boring. But they had given me this typewriter to work on, so I just started writing stories. I sometimes think all the people who were missing in my sculpture gushed out into the stories.' He published several short stories, then his second and third novels, which both won the Hawthornden Prize (established in 1919 by Alice Warrender and named after William Drummond of Hawthornden, the Hawthornden Prize is one of the UK's oldest literary awards). A number of other prizes followed, and Trevor began working full-time as a writer in 1965.
Since then, Trevor has published nearly 40 novels, short story collections, plays, and collections of nonfiction. He has won three Whitbread Awards, a PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1977 Trevor was appointed an honorary (he holds Irish, not British, citizenship) Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to literature and in 2002 he was elevated to honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). Since he began writing, William Trevor regularly spends half the year in Italy or Switzerland, often visiting Ireland in the other half. He lived in Devon, in South West England, on an old mill surrounded by 40 acres of land.
In 1958 Trevor published his first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, to little critical success. Two years later, he abandoned sculpting completely, feeling his work had become too abstract, and found a job writing copy for a London advertising agency. 'This was absurd,' he said. 'They would give me four lines or so to write and four or five days to write it in. It was so boring. But they had given me this typewriter to work on, so I just started writing stories. I sometimes think all the people who were missing in my sculpture gushed out into the stories.' He published several short stories, then his second and third novels, which both won the Hawthornden Prize (established in 1919 by Alice Warrender and named after William Drummond of Hawthornden, the Hawthornden Prize is one of the UK's oldest literary awards). A number of other prizes followed, and Trevor began working full-time as a writer in 1965.
Since then, Trevor has published nearly 40 novels, short story collections, plays, and collections of nonfiction. He has won three Whitbread Awards, a PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1977 Trevor was appointed an honorary (he holds Irish, not British, citizenship) Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to literature and in 2002 he was elevated to honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). Since he began writing, William Trevor regularly spends half the year in Italy or Switzerland, often visiting Ireland in the other half. He lived in Devon, in South West England, on an old mill surrounded by 40 acres of land.
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August 28, 2025
William Trevor was a great master of psychologically dark tales…
No Cinderellas will come to balls and no gallant knights will ever win in this story…
Just a momentary twist of reason may dramatically change the entire life… And children are especially prone to such twists…
Surrounded by enmity Lucy’s parents decide to leave the country, wishing to frighten them and to stop departure, Lucy runs away but the dire accident happens… So she finds herself forsaken and in total suspense… She grows up but her future remains uncertain… And only once her happiness seems to be so near…
The persisting psychological shock caused by her childish misdeed and her constant guilt prevent her from making any cardinal steps in life and she locks herself in solitude…
Those who were traumatized by the rush of history find their shelter in the everyday monotony but their life remains full of bitterness.
…she often passed on to Lucy tales of disaster or thwarted love that turned out happily in the end. Cinderellas arrived at the ball, sword fights were won by the more handsome contender, modesty was rewarded with riches.
No Cinderellas will come to balls and no gallant knights will ever win in this story…
Just a momentary twist of reason may dramatically change the entire life… And children are especially prone to such twists…
Surrounded by enmity Lucy’s parents decide to leave the country, wishing to frighten them and to stop departure, Lucy runs away but the dire accident happens… So she finds herself forsaken and in total suspense… She grows up but her future remains uncertain… And only once her happiness seems to be so near…
‘You must go back to your contented life. Not be a visitor in mine. For you could only be that, Ralph, although I love you. When we love one another we are stealing what does not belong to us, what is not our due. Darling Ralph, we must make do with memories.’
The persisting psychological shock caused by her childish misdeed and her constant guilt prevent her from making any cardinal steps in life and she locks herself in solitude…
In the drawing-room Lucy sat alone for a little longer, then drew the fire-guard in front of the embers that still glowed in the grate. She tidied the cushions and the chairs, closed the doors of the corner cupboard, easing them where they stuck and had to be pushed a little.
Those who were traumatized by the rush of history find their shelter in the everyday monotony but their life remains full of bitterness.
November 20, 2025
I don’t usually binge on authors but I’ve enjoyed reading Trevor on and off in 2017. This is my fifth, including Summer in the Garden, Love and Summer, Felicia’s Journey and The Children of Dynmouth.
Like most of the other Trevors, the setting is a small, somewhat stifling, village in coastal Ireland and the characters are what I will call listless and almost sex-less, yet not unhappy.
Trevor always introduces us to some background going back to the “Troubles.” In this book the main characters are Protestant; the wife is English and the man is a retired officer in the English Army. And he’s a landlord, so it’s no surprise that one night some local youths set out to burn the “big house” on the estate by throwing a gasoline bomb.
The couple has a pre-teen daughter so they decide for safety’s sake to abandon the run-down house, leave it in the care of an Irish husband and wife team -- maid/cook and handyman -- and move to England.
We know all this right at the beginning of the book. To not reveal any more plot, unless you want to read the spoiler, I’ll just say that the parents “disappear” and end up leaving their daughter behind in the care of the two servants.
When her father reappears 30 years later, Lucy “listens to him politely and respectfully” but of course she has to learn to love him all over again. In the meantime (that is, most of her life) she has come to associate love with “pining for those you love” so even though she falls in love with a young man, and he more so with her, she won’t marry him. It’s as if she wants to imagine love that once was, rather than fully experience it. She also has a heavy sense of guilt in the role that she feels she played in her parents’ disappearance.
The Catholic-Protestant theme comes up many times in the novel. The young Catholic man wounded in the shooting is so guilt-ridden in later life that he ends up in a mental asylum. Lucy visits him there every month. Even when she is quite old, Lucy regularly visits a tea house in the village that has been her lifetime home and hears the waitress say “The Protestant woman is waiting on her change.” Two local nuns befriend her and the local gossips complain “why are those nuns there, – don’t they [the Protestants] take care of their own people?”
On the surface, it seems like a depressing story, but like other Trevor novels, Lucy never shows that depression. She seems satisfied with life and, while perhaps not “happy,” seems to accept her lot with patience and politeness. She’s never angry, depressed or even lonely, even though late in life the only people she ever sees (her father and the servants died long ago) are her hairdresser and the visiting nuns. An interesting story --- maudlin perhaps describes it.
William Trevor is one of my favorite authors and I have read about 15 of his novels and collections of short stories. Below are links to reviews of some others of my favorite novels of his:
Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel
After Rain
The Hill Bachelors
Fools of Fortune
Nights at the Alexandra
The Children of Dynmouth
both top photos from intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com Discovering Dublin's Coastal Villages
The author (1928-2016) from bbc.co.uk
May 4, 2025
The Story of Lucy Gault is another classic about the Troubles in Ireland. The novel is set in the Early 20’ and it focuses on a privileged English family. After receiving threats, the father decides to take the family to England, until the growing tension in Ireland dies down. Due to bad communication, Lucy, the daughter, does not understand the importance of this move and refuses to leave Ireland. Upset, she runs away from home. When a piece of her clothing is found in the sea, she is believed dead and the family leaves without her. The novel deals with the aftermath of this misunderstanding and the repercussions it has on the family and the people close to them.
The premise was interesting but a bit unbelievable. Even if starts in a dramatic fashion, the writing is quite subtle. The story is quite heartbreaking, guilt is one important them who does not allow Lucy to live.
The premise was interesting but a bit unbelievable. Even if starts in a dramatic fashion, the writing is quite subtle. The story is quite heartbreaking, guilt is one important them who does not allow Lucy to live.
December 3, 2020
This is not a ghost story. But all the characters are haunted.
Haunted by loved ones lost, by opportunities not seized, paths untrod, and lives not lived. A house where the only portrait is of “a distant ancestor whose identity had been unknown for as long as anyone of the present could remember” and neighbouring woods silently echo to the memories of those who are there no more. The strand bears shadows of footprints of those who once walked beside the sea, and keening shipwrecks make “a forlorn echo of a terrible time returning in a time that was terrible also”.
Melancholy hues saturate the pages, and drip off individual words. I emerged, damp, blinking, and haunted. Haunted by this story, and also by the words it brought to mind, oft heard and recited in childhood:
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
And there is no health in us.”
From the Book of Common Prayer (Anglican)
Which is the cause of greater regret, greater guilt: the things we do, or the things we dare not?
Image source of girl in white dress, alone in woods, here.
Just a child
In 1921, a child not yet nine (I find myself writing lots of “not”s and “un-”s in this review; it feels apt), lives in a comfortable house in rural Ireland. She’s loved by her parents, though perhaps not quite as much as they love each other. She enjoys her own company, exploring the nearby woods and swimming in the sea. She’s loyal, passionate, imaginative, and independent. But from the first page, shadows gather and hover over this happy family, in the beautiful place they love.
I have been a wilful, exploring child, and had one too: relishing secret places, unconcerned about consequences. But one childish bad choice, compounded by a glint of bad luck, and lives unravel down the years. That is the essence of The Story of Lucy Gault. I could have been that child or that child’s mother; I am glad to be neither.
Who’s to blame?
The backdrop of sectarian strife and world wars parallels, and indirectly triggers, domestic and personal tragedy. Yet the child gets the blame. Takes the blame. Lives the blame. Unbeknown to her, another also takes and lives the blame, haunted to the brink of madness by it.
In a litigious age, embracing responsibility has an air of eccentric nobility. But it’s not necessarily right. Perhaps there is another path to recovery and reparations for those who truly seek it - and it needn’t be religious. (Despite the Irish Catholic versus English Protestant troubles, religion is scenery, rather than spotlighted in this book.)
How long should hope last?
Several characters postpone and surrender the possibility of happiness for honourable but misguided reasons. Guilt in part, but hope as well; both misplaced or disproportionate. Hope sounds positive, but hope can cause as much pain as joy. It’s elusive and unpredictable. Therein lies more confusion and potential agony. But it’s hope we crave. It’s hope we live for. Whatever the price? Till the end of our lives?
The final section is suddenly, sharply, in the present tense. The pain is more acute that way.
Quotes
• “The surf of the sea was a dappled sheen streaked with the last faint afterglow of sunset.”
• “As the surface of the seashore rocks was pitted by the waves and gathered limpets that further disguised what lay beneath, so time made truth of what appeared to be... All memory was regret, all thought empty of consolation.”
• “Borrowed facts, sewn in where there was a dearth, gathered authority with repetition.”
• “They were companions on their journeys; and yet on days like this one, she belonged only to herself.”
• Raindrops “sliding monotonously down the glass”.
• “The early morning light, gauzy and then becoming brash.”
• "'What shall we do today?' They would walk in the hills where sour black cherries grew near marble quarries now exhausted."
• “I am not someone to love... Loving me will make you unhappy.” (I thought of Estella in Great Expectations, though it’s Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre that get explicit mentions.)
• Her “brooding years had created something… wrapping her like a fog that chilled”.
• “Wasn’t it enough that things had settled in the end?” No!
Be careful what you wish for
The tragic message of Lucy Gault is to be careful of what you wish for: the world can be transformed by one small, careless attempt to seize a dream. Its price may be unimaginably high, and resolution too little and too late.
Haunted by loved ones lost, by opportunities not seized, paths untrod, and lives not lived. A house where the only portrait is of “a distant ancestor whose identity had been unknown for as long as anyone of the present could remember” and neighbouring woods silently echo to the memories of those who are there no more. The strand bears shadows of footprints of those who once walked beside the sea, and keening shipwrecks make “a forlorn echo of a terrible time returning in a time that was terrible also”.
Melancholy hues saturate the pages, and drip off individual words. I emerged, damp, blinking, and haunted. Haunted by this story, and also by the words it brought to mind, oft heard and recited in childhood:
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
And there is no health in us.”
From the Book of Common Prayer (Anglican)
Which is the cause of greater regret, greater guilt: the things we do, or the things we dare not?
Image source of girl in white dress, alone in woods, here.
Just a child
In 1921, a child not yet nine (I find myself writing lots of “not”s and “un-”s in this review; it feels apt), lives in a comfortable house in rural Ireland. She’s loved by her parents, though perhaps not quite as much as they love each other. She enjoys her own company, exploring the nearby woods and swimming in the sea. She’s loyal, passionate, imaginative, and independent. But from the first page, shadows gather and hover over this happy family, in the beautiful place they love.
I have been a wilful, exploring child, and had one too: relishing secret places, unconcerned about consequences. But one childish bad choice, compounded by a glint of bad luck, and lives unravel down the years. That is the essence of The Story of Lucy Gault. I could have been that child or that child’s mother; I am glad to be neither.
Who’s to blame?
The backdrop of sectarian strife and world wars parallels, and indirectly triggers, domestic and personal tragedy. Yet the child gets the blame. Takes the blame. Lives the blame. Unbeknown to her, another also takes and lives the blame, haunted to the brink of madness by it.
In a litigious age, embracing responsibility has an air of eccentric nobility. But it’s not necessarily right. Perhaps there is another path to recovery and reparations for those who truly seek it - and it needn’t be religious. (Despite the Irish Catholic versus English Protestant troubles, religion is scenery, rather than spotlighted in this book.)
How long should hope last?
Several characters postpone and surrender the possibility of happiness for honourable but misguided reasons. Guilt in part, but hope as well; both misplaced or disproportionate. Hope sounds positive, but hope can cause as much pain as joy. It’s elusive and unpredictable. Therein lies more confusion and potential agony. But it’s hope we crave. It’s hope we live for. Whatever the price? Till the end of our lives?
The final section is suddenly, sharply, in the present tense. The pain is more acute that way.
Quotes
• “The surf of the sea was a dappled sheen streaked with the last faint afterglow of sunset.”
• “As the surface of the seashore rocks was pitted by the waves and gathered limpets that further disguised what lay beneath, so time made truth of what appeared to be... All memory was regret, all thought empty of consolation.”
• “Borrowed facts, sewn in where there was a dearth, gathered authority with repetition.”
• “They were companions on their journeys; and yet on days like this one, she belonged only to herself.”
• Raindrops “sliding monotonously down the glass”.
• “The early morning light, gauzy and then becoming brash.”
• "'What shall we do today?' They would walk in the hills where sour black cherries grew near marble quarries now exhausted."
• “I am not someone to love... Loving me will make you unhappy.” (I thought of Estella in Great Expectations, though it’s Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre that get explicit mentions.)
• Her “brooding years had created something… wrapping her like a fog that chilled”.
• “Wasn’t it enough that things had settled in the end?” No!
Be careful what you wish for
The tragic message of Lucy Gault is to be careful of what you wish for: the world can be transformed by one small, careless attempt to seize a dream. Its price may be unimaginably high, and resolution too little and too late.
January 1, 2021
3.5 stars
“Disobedience had been a child’s defiance, deception the coinage they had offered her themselves.”
Misunderstandings and miscommunications abound in human relationships. Perhaps even more so when one is dealing with a young child. A child senses something not quite right in his or her world, but is not able to piece together all those complicated parts to fashion the whole picture. When eight year old Lucy Gault learns of her parents’ plan to abandon her beloved home for another country, a series of snowballing events are set in motion. Lives are forever altered. Unrest in 1920s Ireland further aggravates an ill-fated situation.
“Chance, not wrath, had this summer ordered the fate of the Gaults.”
When I was able to gloss over the initial implausibility of a certain knee-jerk reaction, I settled more firmly in this story and took pleasure in the beauty of William Trevor’s writing. Whenever an Irish author is put in front of me, the word melancholy never ceases to spring forth, no matter how unimaginative it may seem each time it comes to mind. I don’t necessarily equate “melancholy” with wholly depressing or darkness. There’s always a reflective tone to the word, a sense of acceptance perhaps. The journey to such acceptance may take years, decades even, but there is a promise of redemption that I am constantly seeking when reading such books.
“Where did mercy come from when there should have been none left?”
This is a slow-paced story that not all will appreciate. The gratification lies in the prose and the opportunities to reflect on life. How much of what happens to us is by chance rather than design? The burdens of guilt, loneliness, loss, and unrequited love, and the gifts of acceptance and forgiveness are the themes which kept me turning the pages and ultimately won me over despite my early hesitations. The Story of Lucy Gault is my first by this author, but my friends have already convinced me that Trevor's short stories are perhaps his greatest achievement. Naturally, I will take heed.
“Calamity shapes the story that is told, and is the reason for its being: is what they know, besides, the gentle fruit of such misfortune’s harvest? They like to think so: she has sensed it that they do.”
“Disobedience had been a child’s defiance, deception the coinage they had offered her themselves.”
Misunderstandings and miscommunications abound in human relationships. Perhaps even more so when one is dealing with a young child. A child senses something not quite right in his or her world, but is not able to piece together all those complicated parts to fashion the whole picture. When eight year old Lucy Gault learns of her parents’ plan to abandon her beloved home for another country, a series of snowballing events are set in motion. Lives are forever altered. Unrest in 1920s Ireland further aggravates an ill-fated situation.
“Chance, not wrath, had this summer ordered the fate of the Gaults.”
When I was able to gloss over the initial implausibility of a certain knee-jerk reaction, I settled more firmly in this story and took pleasure in the beauty of William Trevor’s writing. Whenever an Irish author is put in front of me, the word melancholy never ceases to spring forth, no matter how unimaginative it may seem each time it comes to mind. I don’t necessarily equate “melancholy” with wholly depressing or darkness. There’s always a reflective tone to the word, a sense of acceptance perhaps. The journey to such acceptance may take years, decades even, but there is a promise of redemption that I am constantly seeking when reading such books.
“Where did mercy come from when there should have been none left?”
This is a slow-paced story that not all will appreciate. The gratification lies in the prose and the opportunities to reflect on life. How much of what happens to us is by chance rather than design? The burdens of guilt, loneliness, loss, and unrequited love, and the gifts of acceptance and forgiveness are the themes which kept me turning the pages and ultimately won me over despite my early hesitations. The Story of Lucy Gault is my first by this author, but my friends have already convinced me that Trevor's short stories are perhaps his greatest achievement. Naturally, I will take heed.
“Calamity shapes the story that is told, and is the reason for its being: is what they know, besides, the gentle fruit of such misfortune’s harvest? They like to think so: she has sensed it that they do.”
September 30, 2017
This finely crafted novel follows the life of Lucy Gault through childhood, young adulthood, middle age, and on into her elder years. When she was nine years old in 1921, she was confused by the decision her parents made to leave Ireland for a time due to the troubles and their fear of harm coming to them. She decided to run away, but due to various circumstances, her parents thought she had drowned.
Her parents did leave for the continent and her mother mourned Lucy’s loss so deeply that she refused ever to go back to their home and property. Lucy’s parents were both heartsick and because of the arrangements they had made prior to leaving, they chose not to remain in contact with their home’s caretakers and to focus instead on healing their grief.
This story moves back and forth between Lucy’s life and that of her parents who moved to Switzerland when it appeared that their haven in Italy would be adversely affected by the WWII.
The writing in this novel is interesting – the pace changes through each stage of Lucy’s life – brisk and bright during her young years, sedate and stately during her adult years, and softer and a bit more erratic, like an elderly person’s darting memories, during her last years.
This was my first reading experience of William Trevor’s work and I am captivated enough to look forward to more.
Her parents did leave for the continent and her mother mourned Lucy’s loss so deeply that she refused ever to go back to their home and property. Lucy’s parents were both heartsick and because of the arrangements they had made prior to leaving, they chose not to remain in contact with their home’s caretakers and to focus instead on healing their grief.
This story moves back and forth between Lucy’s life and that of her parents who moved to Switzerland when it appeared that their haven in Italy would be adversely affected by the WWII.
The writing in this novel is interesting – the pace changes through each stage of Lucy’s life – brisk and bright during her young years, sedate and stately during her adult years, and softer and a bit more erratic, like an elderly person’s darting memories, during her last years.
This was my first reading experience of William Trevor’s work and I am captivated enough to look forward to more.
May 26, 2017
This is a story made of harrowing what ifs.
What if Ireland hadn’t been a divided country when Lucy Gault and her parents were leading an honest life in Lahardane?
What if a child hadn’t made a home of the seashore and the leaden skies and rugged cliffs of the Irish coastline? A home she wasn’t ready to abandon?
What if guilt and miscommunication hadn’t ruled the fate of the Gaults and condemned them to perpetual isolation?
Tragedies often make legends. This is the case of Lucy Gault and the events that shape the secluded path of her life at the tender age of eight.
And unshakable sense of fatality pervades in Trevor’s precise choice of words, a contained melancholy, sensuous in its unpretentious lyricism, which sinks deep into the reader’s bones, leaving little space for promise.
Self-denial and self-condemnation are at the core of this sad story. The reader becomes a helpless witness to the uncanny circumstances that lead the characters to self-inflicted punishment provoked by misunderstanding and lack of capacity to express their feelings.
Years seem to go by uneventfully on the surface, while turbulent currents shake the fragile underworlds the characters have nourished with solitude and resignation over a past that can’t be undone.
William Trevor’s prose evokes the precariousness of life and challenges the reader by clearly delineating an uncommonly strong-willed character that bears the unbearable and grows wise through patience, endurance and compassion. Lucy’s personality blends with the rough landscape of her land in perfect synesthesia, and thoughts, smells and sights become one indivisible ensemble.
Lucy’s destiny is finally marked by unexpected blessings and the pure, if also merciless, beauty of the natural world; a destiny that ceases to be tragic when it’s prompted by personal choice, not merely by unfortunate circumstances.
A lesson to learn, a light to hold in moments of darkness.
What if Ireland hadn’t been a divided country when Lucy Gault and her parents were leading an honest life in Lahardane?
What if a child hadn’t made a home of the seashore and the leaden skies and rugged cliffs of the Irish coastline? A home she wasn’t ready to abandon?
What if guilt and miscommunication hadn’t ruled the fate of the Gaults and condemned them to perpetual isolation?
Tragedies often make legends. This is the case of Lucy Gault and the events that shape the secluded path of her life at the tender age of eight.
And unshakable sense of fatality pervades in Trevor’s precise choice of words, a contained melancholy, sensuous in its unpretentious lyricism, which sinks deep into the reader’s bones, leaving little space for promise.
Self-denial and self-condemnation are at the core of this sad story. The reader becomes a helpless witness to the uncanny circumstances that lead the characters to self-inflicted punishment provoked by misunderstanding and lack of capacity to express their feelings.
Years seem to go by uneventfully on the surface, while turbulent currents shake the fragile underworlds the characters have nourished with solitude and resignation over a past that can’t be undone.
William Trevor’s prose evokes the precariousness of life and challenges the reader by clearly delineating an uncommonly strong-willed character that bears the unbearable and grows wise through patience, endurance and compassion. Lucy’s personality blends with the rough landscape of her land in perfect synesthesia, and thoughts, smells and sights become one indivisible ensemble.
Lucy’s destiny is finally marked by unexpected blessings and the pure, if also merciless, beauty of the natural world; a destiny that ceases to be tragic when it’s prompted by personal choice, not merely by unfortunate circumstances.
A lesson to learn, a light to hold in moments of darkness.
September 19, 2021
This book is full of people sitting around.
They sit around after quite a fascinating bit of inciting action occurs, which you can find out by reading the back cover of the novel. The Gault family in 1920s Ireland prepare to flee their property under threat of violence. Eight year old Lucy runs away out of protest, but due to circumstantial evidence which spurs a devastating misunderstanding, her parents leave without her.
Lucy Gault spends the rest of her life sitting around. She's locked herself up on the family property, much like Rapunzel in her tower, waiting for her parents to return. (As the years/decades go by, this becomes more and more implausible.)
Her parents spend the rest of their lives sitting around. Ah, to vagabond through galleries and cafes and never work a day or reach out to a single human being for thirty years. (This was borderline ridiculous, never mind implausible.)
Now, as an aside: you may or may not know that I'm trying to publish my own novel. Much like this book, my writer's journey began with some scintillating inciting action (me writing over the course of a few years, between the hours of 5 and 7 am, or on the side of the road in my car in stolen hours). What followed, much like this book, has been a whole lot of sitting around.
This week there was a reprieve from the sitting around. There were emails, there were phone calls, agents and editors chattering and big talk and bigger hopes. But now, unfortunately, I'm back to sitting around (or, to be more accurate to my state yesterday and today, plastered to the floor in despair).
So you could say, if you were into severe understatement, that I've kind of had it with sitting around, both in my real life and in my reading life.
The Story of Lucy Gault was written by a gifted author, that can't be denied, but it doesn't have the same energy, plot structure, and brilliance of The Children of Dynmouth. This book dragged along with its characters' almost pathological passivity and is doused with more than its share of lost opportunities, and the payoff was hardly worth the time it took to get to the last page. I won't be one who drools over the melodrama of a cast of sad-sack characters letting their lives pass on by for no good reason.
On the other hand, I'm grateful, because it's given me a kick in the arse - something Lucy and her parents needed, badly! Who knows how the next chapter of my story will go, but I do know I won't be facing it sitting down.
They sit around after quite a fascinating bit of inciting action occurs, which you can find out by reading the back cover of the novel. The Gault family in 1920s Ireland prepare to flee their property under threat of violence. Eight year old Lucy runs away out of protest, but due to circumstantial evidence which spurs a devastating misunderstanding, her parents leave without her.
Lucy Gault spends the rest of her life sitting around. She's locked herself up on the family property, much like Rapunzel in her tower, waiting for her parents to return. (As the years/decades go by, this becomes more and more implausible.)
Her parents spend the rest of their lives sitting around. Ah, to vagabond through galleries and cafes and never work a day or reach out to a single human being for thirty years. (This was borderline ridiculous, never mind implausible.)
Now, as an aside: you may or may not know that I'm trying to publish my own novel. Much like this book, my writer's journey began with some scintillating inciting action (me writing over the course of a few years, between the hours of 5 and 7 am, or on the side of the road in my car in stolen hours). What followed, much like this book, has been a whole lot of sitting around.
This week there was a reprieve from the sitting around. There were emails, there were phone calls, agents and editors chattering and big talk and bigger hopes. But now, unfortunately, I'm back to sitting around (or, to be more accurate to my state yesterday and today, plastered to the floor in despair).
So you could say, if you were into severe understatement, that I've kind of had it with sitting around, both in my real life and in my reading life.
The Story of Lucy Gault was written by a gifted author, that can't be denied, but it doesn't have the same energy, plot structure, and brilliance of The Children of Dynmouth. This book dragged along with its characters' almost pathological passivity and is doused with more than its share of lost opportunities, and the payoff was hardly worth the time it took to get to the last page. I won't be one who drools over the melodrama of a cast of sad-sack characters letting their lives pass on by for no good reason.
On the other hand, I'm grateful, because it's given me a kick in the arse - something Lucy and her parents needed, badly! Who knows how the next chapter of my story will go, but I do know I won't be facing it sitting down.
December 3, 2020
A mantle of melancholy settled over my shoulders as I was reading this. Tormented souls, things left unsaid, abject loneliness, lives half-lived. Beautifully written, it made my heart ache.
July 30, 2024
“She should have died a child; she knows that but has never said it to the nuns, had never included in the story of herself the days that felt like years when she lay among the fallen stones. It would have lowered their spirits, although it lifts her own because instead of nothing there is what there is.”
There certainly are some flaws in this story and it probably rather deserves 4 stars, but as I really enjoyed this book, I'll give it a full 5 stars - deal with it! :-)
Ireland, 1921. Captain Gault fears for his own safety and that of his family: Because he fought for the English army, some townspeople poison his dogs and get caught while trying to set his house on fire. The Gaults decide to move to England, but their 9-year-old daughter Lucy does not want to leave her home and runs away – when she is believed to be dead, her parents leave without her.
As I am not an expert on British-Irish relations, I had to google what Captain Gault meant when Trevor describes him thinking: “For had not, after all, the people risen up, and was not that the beginning of the hell which had so swiftly been completed in this small corner?” Apparently, Gault had been fighting in the Easter Rising of 1916, an armed insurrection launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland, an incident that was an important turning point for the republican cause during the Irish revolutionary period. As Gault himself is Irish, but he fought for the British Army, he is by some people perceived as a traitor, which is why he and his family are attacked (sorry if this explanation is a total #facepalm for the Brits and the Irish on here – the book does not explain it either).When he leaves, he is fleeing his own country, abandoning his home and (unknowingly) his daughter as another part of himself.
The story goes on to focus on Captain Gault and his English wife Heloise, Lucy and one of the young men who tried to burn down the house – all of their lives are haunted by what happened, all of them are weighed down by guilt and try to find forgiveness, if not to say salvation, because yes, this is also a book about religion.
Some decisions these characters make might seem strange at first (and I would personally claim that many of them are wrong), but they are deeply rooted in Catholic ideas like repentance, which can be achieved through voluntary renunciation, the experience of suffering and helping others (Lucy), purification through pilgrimage (Lucy’s parents), as well as prayer and an act of atonement (the young wannabe-arsonist, who of course prays to the Virgin Mary) - the Gaults might be Protestants, but they reflect a Catholic culture (I might not be Irish, but I am a Catholic! :-)). The book is full of religious vocabulary and imagery, which, in combination with the beautiful descriptions of the Irish landscape, gives the text an almost spiritual, meditative quality. There also is a particular melancholy to the text that echoes the regret over past events that cannot be changed anymore.
Those decisions the individual characters take, often far from logical, are the most interesting part of the book – but as I do not want to spoil everything, just read it yourselves! :-)
There certainly are some flaws in this story and it probably rather deserves 4 stars, but as I really enjoyed this book, I'll give it a full 5 stars - deal with it! :-)
Ireland, 1921. Captain Gault fears for his own safety and that of his family: Because he fought for the English army, some townspeople poison his dogs and get caught while trying to set his house on fire. The Gaults decide to move to England, but their 9-year-old daughter Lucy does not want to leave her home and runs away – when she is believed to be dead, her parents leave without her.
As I am not an expert on British-Irish relations, I had to google what Captain Gault meant when Trevor describes him thinking: “For had not, after all, the people risen up, and was not that the beginning of the hell which had so swiftly been completed in this small corner?” Apparently, Gault had been fighting in the Easter Rising of 1916, an armed insurrection launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland, an incident that was an important turning point for the republican cause during the Irish revolutionary period. As Gault himself is Irish, but he fought for the British Army, he is by some people perceived as a traitor, which is why he and his family are attacked (sorry if this explanation is a total #facepalm for the Brits and the Irish on here – the book does not explain it either).When he leaves, he is fleeing his own country, abandoning his home and (unknowingly) his daughter as another part of himself.
The story goes on to focus on Captain Gault and his English wife Heloise, Lucy and one of the young men who tried to burn down the house – all of their lives are haunted by what happened, all of them are weighed down by guilt and try to find forgiveness, if not to say salvation, because yes, this is also a book about religion.
Some decisions these characters make might seem strange at first (and I would personally claim that many of them are wrong), but they are deeply rooted in Catholic ideas like repentance, which can be achieved through voluntary renunciation, the experience of suffering and helping others (Lucy), purification through pilgrimage (Lucy’s parents), as well as prayer and an act of atonement (the young wannabe-arsonist, who of course prays to the Virgin Mary) - the Gaults might be Protestants, but they reflect a Catholic culture (I might not be Irish, but I am a Catholic! :-)). The book is full of religious vocabulary and imagery, which, in combination with the beautiful descriptions of the Irish landscape, gives the text an almost spiritual, meditative quality. There also is a particular melancholy to the text that echoes the regret over past events that cannot be changed anymore.
Those decisions the individual characters take, often far from logical, are the most interesting part of the book – but as I do not want to spoil everything, just read it yourselves! :-)
April 24, 2020
"It is our tragedy in Ireland that for one reason or another we are repeatedly obliged to flee from what we hold dear. Our defeated patriots have gone, our great earls, our famine emigrants, and now the poor in search for work. Exile is part of us."
This book is a perfect example of what has been called the Sliding Door Theory, when inconsequent events can change the trajectory of future events. It, or variations of it, has been called the butterfly effect, or simply the what-ifs and the almosts. The proverb that begins"For want of a nail" also tells how one small detail can change everything.
The Story of Lucy Gault takes place in the year 1920 during the political and religious unrest known as The Troubles. Because a bullet was fired, a move was planned. Because a move was planned, a child ran away. Because a child's clothing item was found on the beach, a child was presumed drowned. Because obsessive grief was felt, another move occurred.. Because guilt was experienced, a marriage didn't happen.
This tragic string of events in Trevor's beautifully simple but elegant style would alone make a worthwhile story. But it is how the characters cope with these events which truly demonstrates the author's insights. Forgiveness and redemption are received and given. Great happiness is not achieved but an acceptance of what remains and the ability to be at peace with it is.
I have acquired a love of literature by Irish authors, especially William Trevor. This book's ending, like many by Irish writers, does not come with a bang - no lights flashing, no cheerful resolutions. The ending just slides gently into its finish without fanfare. It may be melancholy but it is not fake. It is like life itself.
More quotes
"I am not familiar with the sense or otherwise of the very young, although I grant you that in my daily work I frequently encounter limitations of sense in the mature."
"The cheerfulness that came now and again to Lahardane wasn't real and only lasted for as long as they remembered to pretend."
"Borrowed facts, sewn in where there was a dearth, gathered authority with repetition."
This book is a perfect example of what has been called the Sliding Door Theory, when inconsequent events can change the trajectory of future events. It, or variations of it, has been called the butterfly effect, or simply the what-ifs and the almosts. The proverb that begins"For want of a nail" also tells how one small detail can change everything.
The Story of Lucy Gault takes place in the year 1920 during the political and religious unrest known as The Troubles. Because a bullet was fired, a move was planned. Because a move was planned, a child ran away. Because a child's clothing item was found on the beach, a child was presumed drowned. Because obsessive grief was felt, another move occurred.. Because guilt was experienced, a marriage didn't happen.
This tragic string of events in Trevor's beautifully simple but elegant style would alone make a worthwhile story. But it is how the characters cope with these events which truly demonstrates the author's insights. Forgiveness and redemption are received and given. Great happiness is not achieved but an acceptance of what remains and the ability to be at peace with it is.
I have acquired a love of literature by Irish authors, especially William Trevor. This book's ending, like many by Irish writers, does not come with a bang - no lights flashing, no cheerful resolutions. The ending just slides gently into its finish without fanfare. It may be melancholy but it is not fake. It is like life itself.
More quotes
"I am not familiar with the sense or otherwise of the very young, although I grant you that in my daily work I frequently encounter limitations of sense in the mature."
"The cheerfulness that came now and again to Lahardane wasn't real and only lasted for as long as they remembered to pretend."
"Borrowed facts, sewn in where there was a dearth, gathered authority with repetition."
July 30, 2024
“Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty first, nineteen twenty one.”
So begins this novel by one of my favourite Irish writers, William Trevor. Ireland is going through a difficult time in 1921- Captain Gault had been in the British army, his wife is British and they are well off. Their fear is mounting and they decide they must leave Ireland. Their 8 year old daughter, Lucy, loves her home and does not want to leave. Disaster ensues and all their lives are changed forever. ( not a spoiler- in the blurb)
Trevor is a master of prose and character development. This book made me feel anxious from the get go and I could have read it straight through but I chose to slow down so it would last longer.
What Trevor builds on is the repercussions from one event- how it affects all the main characters, but also the peripheral- the townspeople, the Canon, the lawyer, the home caretakers and also how it affected the young boy who was shot.
“How little comforts in the ghosts of daydreams.”
“Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel.”
Life can certainly be cruel. Trevor brilliantly explores how this one event can affect a person for life. It really is a book that will haunt me- it’s so mesmerizing!
Published: 2002
So begins this novel by one of my favourite Irish writers, William Trevor. Ireland is going through a difficult time in 1921- Captain Gault had been in the British army, his wife is British and they are well off. Their fear is mounting and they decide they must leave Ireland. Their 8 year old daughter, Lucy, loves her home and does not want to leave. Disaster ensues and all their lives are changed forever. ( not a spoiler- in the blurb)
Trevor is a master of prose and character development. This book made me feel anxious from the get go and I could have read it straight through but I chose to slow down so it would last longer.
What Trevor builds on is the repercussions from one event- how it affects all the main characters, but also the peripheral- the townspeople, the Canon, the lawyer, the home caretakers and also how it affected the young boy who was shot.
“How little comforts in the ghosts of daydreams.”
“Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel.”
Life can certainly be cruel. Trevor brilliantly explores how this one event can affect a person for life. It really is a book that will haunt me- it’s so mesmerizing!
Published: 2002
December 25, 2020
The four books of William Trevor's I've read were written respectively in 1991, 1994, 1996 and, this one, 2002 which means he was in his sixties or seventies and probably past his prime. And not surprisingly perhaps why he seems a writer completely out of step with the times in which he lived. He reminds me of myself at school - when writing a story I would write it not with my own sensibility but with an attempt at appropriating the sensibility of my favourite writers from the past. Not once have I felt Trevor has contributed anything new to the novel or short story. He rehashes what's already been done and done much better. He writes a lot about the natural world but always with a kind of hackneyed textbook lyricism. It's interesting that he never seems to have evolved his sensibility because for me his characters have a similar problem. They rarely develop. They remain strait-jacketed by the plot device which brought them into being. At the end of this novel Trevor, indulging again his oppressive sentimental nostalgia, has a dig at people speaking on their phones in the street. The irony is, had mobile phones been around when this novel is set none of its hot air tragedy would have been able to happen.
For a writer clearly so ill at ease in the modern world it makes sense that he should turn his hand to historical fiction which is what he does here. Except even the best historical fiction is dependent on pioneering sensibility as is the case with Hilary Mantel or, to a lesser extent, Sebastian Barry. That said, this novel begins well. A protestant landowner in Ireland catches three catholic youths in the act of setting fire to his house and shoots one of them, wounding him in the shoulder. Tension is established. Will the catholic youths return? Captain Gault decides they will and decides it's time to leave Ireland. His eight year old daughter though does not want to leave her childhood home and runs away. Now begins the onslaught of highly implausible plot devices. Captain Gault and his wife seem almost eager to believe their daughter is dead. A stance that is psychologically way off kilter. Within a couple of weeks they've bolted to mainland Europe but without selling their house which is being looked after by a servant couple. The Gault family have been shown living a modest simple life yet we now discover Mrs Gault has enough money to support her and her husband in a life of leisure for the rest of their lives. The daughter isn't dead of course. She broke her ankle and apparently lied in a ditch for two weeks. Trevor conveniently skips all detail of these two implausible weeks. Once abroad, Captain Gault makes the decision to cut off all ties with everyone he knows. This novel, littered with plot devices which don't ring even remotely true, now enters the realms of absurdity. It's always a bad sign when an author feels the need to justify his plot which is what Trevor now does. Captain Gault, we're told, feels any news from Ireland will upset his wife too much. So he and his wife never learn that their daughter isn't dead. They are now living in Mussolini's Italy. It's clear Trevor doesn't have a clue about Mussolini's Italy. His Italy is the bog standard clichéd depiction of churches, bells, paintings and piazzas. Everything is pretty and civilised.
All the characters in this novel are one dimensional, their chief characteristic always a psychologically questionable plot device. It's been said Trevor knows his characters so well he can afford to leave out many of the characteristics that make them tick. This for me is baloney. One of his characters could be gay and he wouldn't know it. He hasn't a clue what his exiled couple did for thirty years without employment except visit churches and drink coffee in piazzas as though they're on a ten day holiday. It never occurs to him that often his characters would deeply irritate each other in the circumstances he creates. Often his characters are almost childishly benign. And when you've read a few of his books you begin to recognise the same old characters churned out again and again. Here again we have the mad boy who has a divine revelation, the female who emotionally never gets beyond adolescence; the female determined to play the tragic innocent victim. I couldn't help thinking of the psychologically complex nature of Tess' tragic fate in Hardy's novel; by comparison Trevor's tragic heroine is a strand of tinsel. If I abandoned books I would have given this up less than half way through. There's so little at stake in the second half of this book that I'm baffled people are still encouraged to read it. For me William Trevor is the perfect example of how frequently male writers have been vastly overrated at the expense of much more talented female writers. Especially galling with him because he kind of writes like a caricature of a woman. Shirley Hazzard can write the pants off him and yet barely anyone reads her. Come to that Rosamond Lehman, for me a decent third division writer, can write the pants off him too and seems more modern despite writing decades earlier. Somehow, critical opinion has been incredibly generous to William Trevor. I'm not sure though that it will last.
Apologies for my lack of Christmas spirit in this review.
For a writer clearly so ill at ease in the modern world it makes sense that he should turn his hand to historical fiction which is what he does here. Except even the best historical fiction is dependent on pioneering sensibility as is the case with Hilary Mantel or, to a lesser extent, Sebastian Barry. That said, this novel begins well. A protestant landowner in Ireland catches three catholic youths in the act of setting fire to his house and shoots one of them, wounding him in the shoulder. Tension is established. Will the catholic youths return? Captain Gault decides they will and decides it's time to leave Ireland. His eight year old daughter though does not want to leave her childhood home and runs away. Now begins the onslaught of highly implausible plot devices. Captain Gault and his wife seem almost eager to believe their daughter is dead. A stance that is psychologically way off kilter. Within a couple of weeks they've bolted to mainland Europe but without selling their house which is being looked after by a servant couple. The Gault family have been shown living a modest simple life yet we now discover Mrs Gault has enough money to support her and her husband in a life of leisure for the rest of their lives. The daughter isn't dead of course. She broke her ankle and apparently lied in a ditch for two weeks. Trevor conveniently skips all detail of these two implausible weeks. Once abroad, Captain Gault makes the decision to cut off all ties with everyone he knows. This novel, littered with plot devices which don't ring even remotely true, now enters the realms of absurdity. It's always a bad sign when an author feels the need to justify his plot which is what Trevor now does. Captain Gault, we're told, feels any news from Ireland will upset his wife too much. So he and his wife never learn that their daughter isn't dead. They are now living in Mussolini's Italy. It's clear Trevor doesn't have a clue about Mussolini's Italy. His Italy is the bog standard clichéd depiction of churches, bells, paintings and piazzas. Everything is pretty and civilised.
All the characters in this novel are one dimensional, their chief characteristic always a psychologically questionable plot device. It's been said Trevor knows his characters so well he can afford to leave out many of the characteristics that make them tick. This for me is baloney. One of his characters could be gay and he wouldn't know it. He hasn't a clue what his exiled couple did for thirty years without employment except visit churches and drink coffee in piazzas as though they're on a ten day holiday. It never occurs to him that often his characters would deeply irritate each other in the circumstances he creates. Often his characters are almost childishly benign. And when you've read a few of his books you begin to recognise the same old characters churned out again and again. Here again we have the mad boy who has a divine revelation, the female who emotionally never gets beyond adolescence; the female determined to play the tragic innocent victim. I couldn't help thinking of the psychologically complex nature of Tess' tragic fate in Hardy's novel; by comparison Trevor's tragic heroine is a strand of tinsel. If I abandoned books I would have given this up less than half way through. There's so little at stake in the second half of this book that I'm baffled people are still encouraged to read it. For me William Trevor is the perfect example of how frequently male writers have been vastly overrated at the expense of much more talented female writers. Especially galling with him because he kind of writes like a caricature of a woman. Shirley Hazzard can write the pants off him and yet barely anyone reads her. Come to that Rosamond Lehman, for me a decent third division writer, can write the pants off him too and seems more modern despite writing decades earlier. Somehow, critical opinion has been incredibly generous to William Trevor. I'm not sure though that it will last.
Apologies for my lack of Christmas spirit in this review.
July 17, 2020
Can a tragic life ever be a beautiful thing? It can when written by William Trevor. I am amazed that it has taken me so long to discover this author. I cannot really describe this novel because the series of events is equal parts unbelievable and yet inevitable. It is credible because the plot is so finely crafted that not a detail is missing. In our "instant everything" society today, that the lack of communication in 1921 could bring such heartbreak is remarkable. So many chances lost, so many wrong decisions that seemed right at the time, coincidences that brought about changes good and bad; it all held me spellbound til the end.
But more importantly to me was the beauty of the prose, the way this place and these people were brought to life. "Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel". That sentence alone brought tears to my eyes. Eleven words that say more than another author might take a page to say.
Lucy Gault reminded me in some ways of another favorite book, Miss Jane, by Brad Watson. Not that the stories are even remotely similar, but the way both women accepted their fates with character and strength. Favorite book and new favorite author....lucky day for me!
But more importantly to me was the beauty of the prose, the way this place and these people were brought to life. "Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel". That sentence alone brought tears to my eyes. Eleven words that say more than another author might take a page to say.
Lucy Gault reminded me in some ways of another favorite book, Miss Jane, by Brad Watson. Not that the stories are even remotely similar, but the way both women accepted their fates with character and strength. Favorite book and new favorite author....lucky day for me!
August 22, 2025
داستان لوسی گولت، اثری از ویلیام ترور نویسنده ی ایرلندی است.همونطور که عنوان کتاب پیداست؛داستان دربارهی دختری به نام لوسی گولت است که در ایرلند دههی ۱۹۲۰ را روایت میکند.
زمانی که لوسی با خانوادهاش به خوشی زندگی میکرد تااینکه بهشون حمله میکنند.
خانوادهی لوسی انگلیسیتبار و از طبقهی زمینداران هستند و در معرض تهدیدهای ملیگرایان ایرلندی قرار دارند. وقتی پدر و مادرش تصمیم میگیرند برای امنیت به انگلستان بروند، لوسی راضی به رفتن نیست و فرار میکند.
نویسنده با زبانی ساده اما عمیق داستان را روایت میکند.
این داستان دربارهی انسان هایی است که بطور ناگهانی تصمیم میگیرند و یک عمر پشیمانی به همراه دارد.نویسنده خیلی خوب تونسته احساس ندامت ،گناه و فراموشی را توصیف کند.
من برخلاف کتاب قبلی این نویسنده تنهایی الیزابت این کتاب رو دوست داشتم علیرغم روند کند داستان ازش لذت بردم.
زمانی که لوسی با خانوادهاش به خوشی زندگی میکرد تااینکه بهشون حمله میکنند.
خانوادهی لوسی انگلیسیتبار و از طبقهی زمینداران هستند و در معرض تهدیدهای ملیگرایان ایرلندی قرار دارند. وقتی پدر و مادرش تصمیم میگیرند برای امنیت به انگلستان بروند، لوسی راضی به رفتن نیست و فرار میکند.
نویسنده با زبانی ساده اما عمیق داستان را روایت میکند.
این داستان دربارهی انسان هایی است که بطور ناگهانی تصمیم میگیرند و یک عمر پشیمانی به همراه دارد.نویسنده خیلی خوب تونسته احساس ندامت ،گناه و فراموشی را توصیف کند.
من برخلاف کتاب قبلی این نویسنده تنهایی الیزابت این کتاب رو دوست داشتم علیرغم روند کند داستان ازش لذت بردم.
September 5, 2021
I steeled myself for some sorrow when I decided to read this novel. After reading all of Trevor's short stories, I believe that a heavy infusion of melancholy is a requisite part of his writing - and part of his power. But there is more here than Lucy's bad luck, guilt and unrequited love. There is plenty of kindness and love in these pages. And it turns out that happiness can be found in unexpected ways.
August 7, 2011
Beautifully written tale of Anglo-Irish family in 1920s Ireland and their daughter Lucy, filled with Irish fate and sadness but also with Irish resilience, forgiveness and wonderful language.
A child's rebellious act changes the lives of everyone within her sphere of influence; it's what every child fears come true. Lucy lives it and becomes mythic in her "grand" house in the small Irish town. To say more will be to tell the story which I don't want to do. Suffice it to say I was captivated by the tale. Perhaps my Irish roots are showing.
A child's rebellious act changes the lives of everyone within her sphere of influence; it's what every child fears come true. Lucy lives it and becomes mythic in her "grand" house in the small Irish town. To say more will be to tell the story which I don't want to do. Suffice it to say I was captivated by the tale. Perhaps my Irish roots are showing.
May 30, 2019
Be warned. This novel is pretty depressing. It is full of missed opportunities, guilt and regret. In fact, this novel should be titled “The Story of Lucy Guilt”. A young girl throws a hissy fit and in doing so, irrevocably steers the fate of the Gault family into oblivion.
Set in 1921, it was a tumultuous time in Ireland. Nestled between the Irish War of Independence and the ensuing civil war, there was a sense of inevitability of their fading fortunes. The rot, however, did not start there. The Gault estate was already being eroded from previous generations. A once prosperous and distinguished family, they were now just struggling to survive.
The Gault family was very private and insular. Each Gault had a lonely existence, even if they were not alone. Everard Gault was the quintessential officer and a gentleman. He maintains a stoic front throughout his journey but he does learn about forgiveness and reconciliation. The only real people in the story were Bridget and Henry (perhaps Aloysius Sullivan too). They were loyal, steadfast and down to earth. They were the anchor for an otherwise rudderless family.
Despite the melancholic tone of the novel, it still manages to get by because Trevor’s writing is pretty seasoned.
Set in 1921, it was a tumultuous time in Ireland. Nestled between the Irish War of Independence and the ensuing civil war, there was a sense of inevitability of their fading fortunes. The rot, however, did not start there. The Gault estate was already being eroded from previous generations. A once prosperous and distinguished family, they were now just struggling to survive.
The Gault family was very private and insular. Each Gault had a lonely existence, even if they were not alone. Everard Gault was the quintessential officer and a gentleman. He maintains a stoic front throughout his journey but he does learn about forgiveness and reconciliation. The only real people in the story were Bridget and Henry (perhaps Aloysius Sullivan too). They were loyal, steadfast and down to earth. They were the anchor for an otherwise rudderless family.
Despite the melancholic tone of the novel, it still manages to get by because Trevor’s writing is pretty seasoned.
January 3, 2023
This was a random pick from 1001 books.
William Trevor is like a modern Thomas Hardy. The plot starts with one mistake and that will always be enough to ruin a life or more. The difference is that the characters suffer in silence, forever waiting for things to align. Is that better than the sufferings of Tess? I'm not sure.
William Trevor is like a modern Thomas Hardy. The plot starts with one mistake and that will always be enough to ruin a life or more. The difference is that the characters suffer in silence, forever waiting for things to align. Is that better than the sufferings of Tess? I'm not sure.
Read
September 28, 20199.5/10
Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child.
The debris of wreckage pulls through this novel like a strong current -- again and again, the circular flow of the whirlpool sucks one soul, and then another, and another, down into its depths.
In all its permutations, it is an absurd tale of loss and woe -- unbelievable in every aspect, and yet so believable it will haunt me and follow me for a very long time, possibly for the rest of my life.
I see the lost, wilful child; I see the wasted lives; I see those lives only half-lived, and while it becomes a tragedy on a very personal, familial level, I see it too as a metaphor for Ireland itself.
It is Yeats who comes to mind, the terrible beauty that is Lucy Gault, who changes things -- changes them utterly -- for family, for friends, for all those who dwell in her shadow, for all those who hear her name.
Like Yeats's terrible beauty, Lucy is whispered about, and reviled, and then ignored and finally beatified for her patience; for her endurance and humility. It seems that at every step, they read her wrong: while deserving neither blame nor praise, she is the beneficiary of each -- no one understanding her, or her tragedy, any more than she understands herself.
But, it is the second coming which sings the stronger in my mind,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats pre-supposes Trevor; or Trevor embodies Yeats, one could have it either way, for myths and legends live in that magic of never-here-never-there world.
Line for line for line, I read the tragedy of Lucy Gault, for while Yeats writes of the bigger sins of society that loomed darkly over him, Lucy Gault is the metaphor-in-miniature of the doom we carry within us, with each thoughtless misstep.
The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distress brought by the sea, so did silence at Lahardane.
Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child.
The debris of wreckage pulls through this novel like a strong current -- again and again, the circular flow of the whirlpool sucks one soul, and then another, and another, down into its depths.
In all its permutations, it is an absurd tale of loss and woe -- unbelievable in every aspect, and yet so believable it will haunt me and follow me for a very long time, possibly for the rest of my life.
I see the lost, wilful child; I see the wasted lives; I see those lives only half-lived, and while it becomes a tragedy on a very personal, familial level, I see it too as a metaphor for Ireland itself.
It is Yeats who comes to mind, the terrible beauty that is Lucy Gault, who changes things -- changes them utterly -- for family, for friends, for all those who dwell in her shadow, for all those who hear her name.
Like Yeats's terrible beauty, Lucy is whispered about, and reviled, and then ignored and finally beatified for her patience; for her endurance and humility. It seems that at every step, they read her wrong: while deserving neither blame nor praise, she is the beneficiary of each -- no one understanding her, or her tragedy, any more than she understands herself.
But, it is the second coming which sings the stronger in my mind,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats pre-supposes Trevor; or Trevor embodies Yeats, one could have it either way, for myths and legends live in that magic of never-here-never-there world.
Line for line for line, I read the tragedy of Lucy Gault, for while Yeats writes of the bigger sins of society that loomed darkly over him, Lucy Gault is the metaphor-in-miniature of the doom we carry within us, with each thoughtless misstep.
The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distress brought by the sea, so did silence at Lahardane.
June 27, 2016
A difficult book to find words to describe, but a pleasure to read - a hauntingly memorable and beautifully elegiac story of rural Ireland. A quiet revelation - reflective, moving and redolent of a lost world.
May 17, 2025
داستان لوسی گولت از ویلیام ترور که قلم نسبتا خوبی داشت ، یکی از کتاب هایی بود که به علت حماقت اینجانب ، در شروع و تنظیم زمان و ایام امتحانات انقدر از یک جایی به بعدش رو نرسیدم بخونم که نه تنها اسم شخصیت ها بلکه داستان رو هم فراموش کردم.
پس چرا این رو مینویسم؟
تا به شما عزیزان بگم هر کتابی رو متناسب با ضخامت و زمانتون انتخاب کنین.
به هر حال...
شاید روزی مجددا رفتم سراغش.
به امید روزی که هیچ کتابی قربانی نشه.
پس چرا این رو مینویسم؟
تا به شما عزیزان بگم هر کتابی رو متناسب با ضخامت و زمانتون انتخاب کنین.
به هر حال...
شاید روزی مجددا رفتم سراغش.
به امید روزی که هیچ کتابی قربانی نشه.
February 8, 2024
This story is about what happens when the world that you have known and relied on and understood comes to an end. Is there anything to be done? Young Lucy believes there is, and she does it and Trevor describes the consequences as they cascade.
In our world of the 21st century, what happened is almost impossible. A hundred years ago, it was often the case that people could move about the world with little or no connection, unless they wanted it otherwise.
“One day, of course,” he predicted now, “there’ll be no one here to do all this. Not that it’ll matter, since we do it for ourselves don’t you think?”
She nodded….their people would end when they did, a duty to them finished, all memory of them dead. Only the myths would linger, the stories that were told.”
Trevor is focused on the stories and recounts the tales that grew from the facts of a husband, wife and daughter, whose lives were changed by “the troubles” and a rifle shot.
Tracing the life of Lucy Gault is a study in melancholia. It is made tolerable by the depth of the character portraits and Trevor’s skill at writing.
4.
In our world of the 21st century, what happened is almost impossible. A hundred years ago, it was often the case that people could move about the world with little or no connection, unless they wanted it otherwise.
“One day, of course,” he predicted now, “there’ll be no one here to do all this. Not that it’ll matter, since we do it for ourselves don’t you think?”
She nodded….their people would end when they did, a duty to them finished, all memory of them dead. Only the myths would linger, the stories that were told.”
Trevor is focused on the stories and recounts the tales that grew from the facts of a husband, wife and daughter, whose lives were changed by “the troubles” and a rifle shot.
Tracing the life of Lucy Gault is a study in melancholia. It is made tolerable by the depth of the character portraits and Trevor’s skill at writing.
4.
March 15, 2024
Home is where the heart is. Eight year old Lucy never wanted to leave her precious home. The “troubles” were brewing in Ireland. Lucy’s father Capt. Everard Gault served with the English army and feared for his family after the attempted house fire. They planned to leave Ireland. Lucy ran away to show her displeasure. Her parents presumed she drowned in the sea after finding articles of her clothing. They left not knowing she was still alive.
This is a book of what if’s. What is Lucy listen to her parents and went away for a better life? What if her father’s letters that he never mailed were actually posted?
What if her parents had returned to Ireland to find she never drowned?
This is a beautifully written novel. It is a sad story of a little girl lost who grows up without her parents. Only because she was a child and did a selfish act of defiance.
This is a compelling novel of grieve and forgiveness.. Not to be missed.
This is a book of what if’s. What is Lucy listen to her parents and went away for a better life? What if her father’s letters that he never mailed were actually posted?
What if her parents had returned to Ireland to find she never drowned?
This is a beautifully written novel. It is a sad story of a little girl lost who grows up without her parents. Only because she was a child and did a selfish act of defiance.
This is a compelling novel of grieve and forgiveness.. Not to be missed.
November 11, 2010
I thought the writing and the story telling was outstanding. Mr. Trevor has a way of making his characters ever so deep but does give the reader the equipment to understand their motivations and what drives them. I think he sums up this book in his own words. "Calamity shaped a life, when long ago, chance was so cruel. Calamity shapes the story that is told, and the reason for its being....
Lucy, a most tragic heroine, makes one mistake and suffers for it in innumerable ways. She lives her life desperately trying to make amends for running away and endeavors to bring conclusion to the lives she feels she has made miserable. Her parents, love for each other is tested in their loss of the daughter they cherished and the grief that Lucy imagines they suffered is forever a weight on her mind and soul. So sad and pathetic is this chain of events that bring people to the limits of understanding and love.
At the conclusion of this novel, Lucy is abe to find a sense of peace and tranquility by helping the very person who caused the tragedy to happen. A very thought provoking book that was hard to put down.
Lucy, a most tragic heroine, makes one mistake and suffers for it in innumerable ways. She lives her life desperately trying to make amends for running away and endeavors to bring conclusion to the lives she feels she has made miserable. Her parents, love for each other is tested in their loss of the daughter they cherished and the grief that Lucy imagines they suffered is forever a weight on her mind and soul. So sad and pathetic is this chain of events that bring people to the limits of understanding and love.
At the conclusion of this novel, Lucy is abe to find a sense of peace and tranquility by helping the very person who caused the tragedy to happen. A very thought provoking book that was hard to put down.
July 31, 2011
The Story of Lucy Gault is a disquieting, haunting, and sad novel worthy of the Booker Prize for which it was nominated in 2002. Faced with the threat of arson to their home (the plight of many Anglo-Irish homes in 1921), Captain Everard and Heloise Gault prepared to flee Lahardane, their modest but much loved estate on the southeast coast of Ireland and go to England. But their daughter, eight-year-old Lucy, was in love with “the glen and the woods and the seashore, the flat rocks where the shrimp pools were” and made a desperate plan not to leave, a decision fueled perhaps by a combination of anxiety and wilfulness and which completely and tragically altered the course of her life. Lucy’s plight keeps you reading because you need to know what happened. As many reviewers have noted, there is indeed not a false note in Trevor’s writing. He writes with a tightness that is at the same time gently lyrical. This is a novel you would want to quietly savor in order to relish the elegiac beauty of Trevor’s prose.
March 17, 2021
As the story opens, nine-year-old Lucy Gault and her English parents are living in Ireland in 1921. A violent incident occurs in which Captain Gault wounds a would-be arsonist. This event leads to a fearful existence, so they decide to leave Ireland. Lucy has never known another home and wants to stay. Lucy makes a fateful decision, resulting in tragedy. Her story becomes local legend.
It is a story of bad timing and missed opportunities. It is also a story representative of Ireland’s history. Themes include forgiveness and redemption. This is my first book by William Trevor. I found it beautifully written and will definitely be reading more of his works.
It is a story of bad timing and missed opportunities. It is also a story representative of Ireland’s history. Themes include forgiveness and redemption. This is my first book by William Trevor. I found it beautifully written and will definitely be reading more of his works.
July 13, 2018
Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel. Calamity shapes the story that is told, and is the reason for its being: is what they know, besides, the gentle fruit of such misfortune's harvest?
November 16, 2019
I started to read William Trevor’s books in the late 1990s and consider him as one of my favorite authors. His fiction and short stories are equally good. I joined GoodReads about 2 months ago and wanted to start to build up my library/books read here, since I do enjoy reading.
I gave it my highest rating A+... from the inside of the front of the book jacket a blurb by Thomas Flanagan: William Trevor is wonderful, lyrical, hilarious when he wants to be, graced with endless powers of laconic and precise observation, shamefully charming, and, in the end, heartbreaking.
So true...
I gave it my highest rating A+... from the inside of the front of the book jacket a blurb by Thomas Flanagan: William Trevor is wonderful, lyrical, hilarious when he wants to be, graced with endless powers of laconic and precise observation, shamefully charming, and, in the end, heartbreaking.
So true...
September 7, 2021
I have had conversations IRL and here on GR about not liking to feel manipulated by writers. I hate being told how I am supposed to feel. Sometimes people do not seem to understand what I am talking about. For those people I will say that William Trevor is the sine qua non of non-manipulative writers. I am awed both by Trevor's facility and economy with words. A reader needs to really pay attention when reading Trevor because it is easy to completely miss shattering events. The loss of home, life, children, dignity, peace happen in the course of a few sentences, and those events are conveyed with no more fanfare than is given a description of a tea towel laid upon a bush to dry. One example "For a moment that night he was glad they had tidied up the graves. Later he was aware of pain. It did not wake him." That is it, the whole death scene . (Not a spoiler, the story takes place over the course of 70 years so people die, that is just one of them). Do with it what you will. For me, I had all sorts of feeling about that death, complicated conflicting feelings, and every feeling was mine and came from the relationship Trevor built between me and the character.
I have read many of Trevor's short stories, but this is my first of his novels. Though this is wonderful and you should read it, I have liked Trevor's short stories a good deal more than I liked this. I tried to identify why I like the short stories more, and I have two theories. The first is that it is not a matter of form, but rather of Trevor being an old man when he wrote this. His standard feeling of melancholy, which has pervaded all the work I have read, is notched up from melancholy to frustration at his obsolescence and the obsolescence of his characters. My second theory is that it is not Trevor's frustration but my own that is invading the reading experience. What comes off as characters' equanimity in the stories I have read feels like the characters' plodding inertia in this novel. Is that because the increased length means I am reading about a litany of incomprehensibly terrible choices and non-choices rather than just a couple? Is this because the characters in this book just work harder to avoid conflict (thereby creating conflict) than those on earlier works? Damned if I know. Whatever the reason I was realllllly frustrated by people not doing anything, of running from understanding or resolution as fast as they could. That is why this is a 4-star rather than a 5-star for me. When people talk the language is peppered with "I can't not" and other phrases that imply an intense desire to not act, to not feel. I don't want to spoil the book so I won't say more, but I will say the central event in the book could have been resolved simply through letting anyone in the world know where characters were living. This is something that pretty much anyone with any connections (and these people had connections), even people with depression and/or PTSD, would do. A large property is left in the care of caretakers, and yet for a lifetime the property owners do not contact the caretakers or even provide their contact information in case of emergency. There is a passing reference at the very end of the book to this now old person seeing people walk down the streets with their phones, and to her hearing about the internet and having no idea what that meant, and maybe that is my problem here. Having lived so long in this age I cannot get my mind around people disappearing -- disappearing is something that is pretty hard to do these days. Maybe this frustration is entirely my fault. In any event, it does not at all ruin the read, it just changes it.
One more note, when I read this the song Delta Dawn kept playing in my head. While I really like music, I have never been much of a Helen Reddy fangirl, but that totally came up. This vision of a girl, then a woman, caught up by the regrets of rejecting love and spending her days waiting for something unattainable while wearing the old abandoned dresses of her old abandoning mother just got me there. I need to start reading more books that make me think of action like Party in the USA or Hot in Here, or even Lust for Life.
I have read many of Trevor's short stories, but this is my first of his novels. Though this is wonderful and you should read it, I have liked Trevor's short stories a good deal more than I liked this. I tried to identify why I like the short stories more, and I have two theories. The first is that it is not a matter of form, but rather of Trevor being an old man when he wrote this. His standard feeling of melancholy, which has pervaded all the work I have read, is notched up from melancholy to frustration at his obsolescence and the obsolescence of his characters. My second theory is that it is not Trevor's frustration but my own that is invading the reading experience. What comes off as characters' equanimity in the stories I have read feels like the characters' plodding inertia in this novel. Is that because the increased length means I am reading about a litany of incomprehensibly terrible choices and non-choices rather than just a couple? Is this because the characters in this book just work harder to avoid conflict (thereby creating conflict) than those on earlier works? Damned if I know. Whatever the reason I was realllllly frustrated by people not doing anything, of running from understanding or resolution as fast as they could. That is why this is a 4-star rather than a 5-star for me. When people talk the language is peppered with "I can't not" and other phrases that imply an intense desire to not act, to not feel. I don't want to spoil the book so I won't say more, but I will say the central event in the book could have been resolved simply through letting anyone in the world know where characters were living. This is something that pretty much anyone with any connections (and these people had connections), even people with depression and/or PTSD, would do. A large property is left in the care of caretakers, and yet for a lifetime the property owners do not contact the caretakers or even provide their contact information in case of emergency. There is a passing reference at the very end of the book to this now old person seeing people walk down the streets with their phones, and to her hearing about the internet and having no idea what that meant, and maybe that is my problem here. Having lived so long in this age I cannot get my mind around people disappearing -- disappearing is something that is pretty hard to do these days. Maybe this frustration is entirely my fault. In any event, it does not at all ruin the read, it just changes it.
One more note, when I read this the song Delta Dawn kept playing in my head. While I really like music, I have never been much of a Helen Reddy fangirl, but that totally came up. This vision of a girl, then a woman, caught up by the regrets of rejecting love and spending her days waiting for something unattainable while wearing the old abandoned dresses of her old abandoning mother just got me there. I need to start reading more books that make me think of action like Party in the USA or Hot in Here, or even Lust for Life.
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