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The Collected Stories
Whether they portray the vagaries of love, the bitter pain of loss and regret or the tragic impact of violence upon ordinary lives, these superb stories reveal the insight, subtle humour and unrivalled artistry that make William Trevor the contemporary master of the form.
Published in separate volumes as The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, The Ballroom of Romance, Angels at the Ritz, Lovers of Their Time, Beyond the Pale, The News From Ireland and Family Sins, this volume also contains four stories that have not been included in these collections.
Published in separate volumes as The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, The Ballroom of Romance, Angels at the Ritz, Lovers of Their Time, Beyond the Pale, The News From Ireland and Family Sins, this volume also contains four stories that have not been included in these collections.
1261 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
341 people are currently reading
4138 people want to read
About the author
William Trevor
177 books761 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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October 20, 2022
Most of all William Trevor reminds me of Anton Chekhov – he possesses the same unique ability to penetrate all the psychological subtleties of his characters and convey them to paper with a hand of a distinctive master.
Expressive museum pieces… A treasure trove of literary doubloons…
This exhaustive collection of his stories boasts a really monumental range… Like life itself.
A short story… Probably one’s life is just an anthology of short stories…
Expressive museum pieces… A treasure trove of literary doubloons…
I am writing this in the drawing-room, in fact at Mrs Ashburton’s writing-desk. I don’t think of it as a story – and certainly not as a letter, for she can never read it – but as a record of what happened in her house after the war. If she hadn’t talked to me so much when I was nine there would not be this record to keep, and I would not still feel her presence. I do not understand what has happened, but as I slowly move towards the age she was when she talked to me I slowly understand a little more. What she said has haunted me for thirty-nine years. It has made me old before my time, and for this I am glad. I feel like a woman of sixty; I’m only forty-eight.
This exhaustive collection of his stories boasts a really monumental range… Like life itself.
A short story… Probably one’s life is just an anthology of short stories…
Want to read
January 2, 2017I tend to think of William Trevor as Ireland's John Cheever, whose work was known to me first. There are no doubt myriad differences between the two writers, but what they have in common seems to me too striking to ignore. There is a certain preference for bibulous, upper middle-class, affluent couples. People bored with their creature comforts and their money and their children and their marriages; professional people, usually, bored too with their jobs and their tawdry affairs and their colleagues. Both Trevor and Cheever also, with great skill in their own way, articulate the grand compromises in the lives of these individuals, and how they deny that any compromise has been made, how they talk themselves out of it or rationalize it away.
For example, in "Angels at the Ritz" we begin with Polly and Gavin Dillard on their way to a party deprecating their friends' penchant for wife swapping. (It's 1975 and Margaret Thatcher has just taken over the leadership of the Conservative Party.) At the end of a vinous evening all the husbands throw their keys on the floor and the blindfolded wives crawl on the floor to pick out a set of keys at random. The Dillards in their early evening sobriety think that this is exactly what they don't want, and they deride it at length, but by the end of the party all of that changes, doesn't it?
For example, in "Angels at the Ritz" we begin with Polly and Gavin Dillard on their way to a party deprecating their friends' penchant for wife swapping. (It's 1975 and Margaret Thatcher has just taken over the leadership of the Conservative Party.) At the end of a vinous evening all the husbands throw their keys on the floor and the blindfolded wives crawl on the floor to pick out a set of keys at random. The Dillards in their early evening sobriety think that this is exactly what they don't want, and they deride it at length, but by the end of the party all of that changes, doesn't it?
September 16, 2017
Dear William Trevor,
Our nine months together is over and I feel a burden lifted. Lifting your hefty 1262 page book at least a couple times a week and opening it to a world of sad, lonely, damaged lives was not easy. Over time, it became harder to pick up, because I came to realize that you would never, NEVER, allow a hopeful ending for a story. Not even once. I often gazed at the cheerful smile on your cover photo and wondered what prompted the despair in your writing.
You are a masterful short story writer, your sentences can be breathtaking and you are funny (but not funny enough to lift the darkness from these pages). Otherwise, there is no way I would have finished this huge, huge, volume. Even though your stories are populated with self-destructive, defeated, bitter and neglected victims whose love is always unrequited – I read on, knowing that each story would be well worth finishing.
I’m relieved to say goodbye but I admit, I’ll miss you, just a little.
Our nine months together is over and I feel a burden lifted. Lifting your hefty 1262 page book at least a couple times a week and opening it to a world of sad, lonely, damaged lives was not easy. Over time, it became harder to pick up, because I came to realize that you would never, NEVER, allow a hopeful ending for a story. Not even once. I often gazed at the cheerful smile on your cover photo and wondered what prompted the despair in your writing.
You are a masterful short story writer, your sentences can be breathtaking and you are funny (but not funny enough to lift the darkness from these pages). Otherwise, there is no way I would have finished this huge, huge, volume. Even though your stories are populated with self-destructive, defeated, bitter and neglected victims whose love is always unrequited – I read on, knowing that each story would be well worth finishing.
I’m relieved to say goodbye but I admit, I’ll miss you, just a little.
November 17, 2012
-----------------------------------
Somewhere about around 30 years ago, I read the short story "In Love with Ariadne" either in a laundromat, waiting in an airport, or bored above the Arctic Circle in winter, or ....something. I think it was in the "Atlantic Magazine", or some other.
I, almost immediately, also, fell in love with Ariadne. And with the writing of William Trevor.
That short story and many, many others are collected in this book. And any one who has read William Trevor will not need to be told that he is a master of the short story. Certainly one of the best writers ever.
About 15 years ago, I bought this book. And since that time this has become one of my permanent books of choice for laundromats, waiting in line at the DMV, or bored above the Arctic Circle in winter, or ....sitting alone at home with my cat.
William Trevor can create a very memorable and human soul, place that soul into a profoundly real place, and then compel an unforgettable and important struggle for that character, and the reader to grapple with. And this has occurred, so far, for me, in every single story. Trevor's people are flawed people, very hard not to love. Trevor's struggles are real-as-cancer. And Trevor's stage sets are possessed with a sense of place so real you feel as if you have been there.
15 years later, at this time, I have probably read more than 3/4 of this book. I've been picking stories at random all that time. And I don't really know because I am not counting, I don't want to know, nor do I hope to finish soon.
I am writing this review now, although I have not "completed" this book because it appears to me that, by Goodreads standards, I may never complete this book. I refuse to read this book in a linear fashion, straight through from page one to page 1260 or whatever it is, because I don't want to ever realize that I am "done". This is one of those books (you know the type) that is so good that you don't want it to end.
I have finally decided that this is the one book that, for me, will never end.
Somewhere about around 30 years ago, I read the short story "In Love with Ariadne" either in a laundromat, waiting in an airport, or bored above the Arctic Circle in winter, or ....something. I think it was in the "Atlantic Magazine", or some other.
I, almost immediately, also, fell in love with Ariadne. And with the writing of William Trevor.
That short story and many, many others are collected in this book. And any one who has read William Trevor will not need to be told that he is a master of the short story. Certainly one of the best writers ever.
About 15 years ago, I bought this book. And since that time this has become one of my permanent books of choice for laundromats, waiting in line at the DMV, or bored above the Arctic Circle in winter, or ....sitting alone at home with my cat.
William Trevor can create a very memorable and human soul, place that soul into a profoundly real place, and then compel an unforgettable and important struggle for that character, and the reader to grapple with. And this has occurred, so far, for me, in every single story. Trevor's people are flawed people, very hard not to love. Trevor's struggles are real-as-cancer. And Trevor's stage sets are possessed with a sense of place so real you feel as if you have been there.
15 years later, at this time, I have probably read more than 3/4 of this book. I've been picking stories at random all that time. And I don't really know because I am not counting, I don't want to know, nor do I hope to finish soon.
I am writing this review now, although I have not "completed" this book because it appears to me that, by Goodreads standards, I may never complete this book. I refuse to read this book in a linear fashion, straight through from page one to page 1260 or whatever it is, because I don't want to ever realize that I am "done". This is one of those books (you know the type) that is so good that you don't want it to end.
I have finally decided that this is the one book that, for me, will never end.
May 13, 2023
Virtually everyone says William Trevor was the greatest living writer of short fiction on our side of the pond. It seems odd it took The New Yorker until the late 70s to print his work. (‘Torridge’ was his first appearance in that magazine.)
The early stories, especially those set in England, have a tetchiness that sometimes grates, though this quickly fades into empathy as the collection rolls on. The mature Trevor has more compassion for his characters than any other writer I know of.
My favourite stories are 'Broken Homes', 'Teresa's Wedding', 'The Day We Got Drunk on Cake', 'Access to the Children', 'Last Wishes', 'Mr Tennyson' and 'Nice Day at School.’ I note with glee how many times Trevor violates the 'rule' that short stories should never start with dialogue (‘Going Home’, 'A Meeting in Middle Age').
The early stories, especially those set in England, have a tetchiness that sometimes grates, though this quickly fades into empathy as the collection rolls on. The mature Trevor has more compassion for his characters than any other writer I know of.
My favourite stories are 'Broken Homes', 'Teresa's Wedding', 'The Day We Got Drunk on Cake', 'Access to the Children', 'Last Wishes', 'Mr Tennyson' and 'Nice Day at School.’ I note with glee how many times Trevor violates the 'rule' that short stories should never start with dialogue (‘Going Home’, 'A Meeting in Middle Age').
September 22, 2010
Over the years I’ve derived so much enjoyment from short stories, in some ways my favourite literary genre alongside the critical essay. I really began when I was little with myths and folktales, a tradition for which I still retain considerable affection. By the age of ten or so I was reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. From there, in successive stages, I discovered such wonderful story tellers as William Somerset Maugham (his Far Eastern stories are a particular favourite), Isaac Bashevis Singer (a magician in words), Nikolai Gogol (my favourite Russian writer in the medium), Graham Greene (who writes extensively in this genre though he is better known as a novelist), Anton Chekhov, Alphonse Daudet, James Joyce, Ambrose Bierce, Franz Kafka, H. H. Munro (better known as ‘Saki’), William Porter (better known as ‘O Henry’) along with so many others, including Balzac and Dickens, not generally associated with this literary form.
Now I’ve discovered William Trevor, an Irish writer, having not long finished The Collected Stories, published by Penguin Books. I suppose it’s not quite true to say that his work is a totally new discovery because I came across him previously, one story, I think, in an anthology of Irish writing, but not enough to form a proper impression. Now I have and there is no doubt in my mind that he will last as one of the great masters of the medium. He writes with such amazing fluency, beautiful limpid prose with a simple realism that reminds me so much of Chekhov. His work is rich in gentle irony with slight overtones of sadness, of empty lives and frustrated hopes.
His stories are mostly set in England or Ireland, often among the most marginal people, those on the edges of society, people often buffeted by an uncertain fate, unsure of who they are and where they are going. Yes, there are elements of pathos and melancholy, offset quite often by an undercurrent of humour. This is the thing about life, something the best writers have always understood: comedy is never that far removed from tragedy.
Some of his female characters caused me to laugh out loud at points, including the impossible Mrs da Tanka in A Meeting in Middle Age, the first in the collection, who teams up with the unfortunate Mr Mileson, a sort of agency detective, in a hotel together to spend the night, thereby providing grounds for a divorce in the days when such matters were complicated. Yes, they team up together in a way that a lion teams up with a gazelle!
In general Trevor shapes characters, in complexity or simplicity, who are totally believable. He is there as a narrator, as a third presence, only in the lightest possible way. He does not ‘create’ his people; he allows them to create themselves, to build themselves up through their own words and actions. There is little in the way of a narrator’s prologue; this is life unfolding as we go along, as fate works away.
The language, the use of words, is quite delicious: precise, beautiful, simple and elegant. There is nothing in the least artificial about Trevor’s prose style, which has directness and a sense of realism that I so admire, largely free of a tangled undergrowth of adjectives, something that only the very best writers can command. For the most part these are small and intimate dramas, not covering a huge range of possible situations, and yet paradoxically immense. In over eighty stories at no point did I feel that I was going over the same ground: each situation seemed unique and fresh.
Did I have any favourites? Well, yes, I suppose I did, though I find it immensely difficult to make a distinction in that having favourites seems to suggest that those not selected were somehow less worthy. At over 1200 pages long this is a compendium of favourites. I should make special mention, though, of Beyond the Pale, where a woman is confronted with the tragedy of Irish history, confronted by a legacy of love, loss and terrible bitterness. The tale she tells destroys a lying idyll. And then there is Matilda’s England, a story in three parts, an enchanting and poignant narrative of time and tide and fortune, of happy highways where people went and can never come again.
I sit here in here now in her drawing-room, and may perhaps become as old as she was. Sometimes I walk up to the meadows where the path to school was, but the meadow isn’t there any more. There are rows of coloured caravans, and motor-cars and shacks. In the garden I can hear the voices of people drifting down to me, and the sound of music from their wireless sets. Nothing is like it was.
This is immediately followed by Torridge, quite different in tone, with a bitingly humorous ending, one that completely dismantles the comforting illusions of a nauseatingly self-satisfied group of old school chums.
These are just a few examples. I could go on and on but there is really not much point. I can really only pay proper tribute to Trevor by retelling his tales one by one. You can do justice, if you are minded to, in reading them for yourselves.
Now I’ve discovered William Trevor, an Irish writer, having not long finished The Collected Stories, published by Penguin Books. I suppose it’s not quite true to say that his work is a totally new discovery because I came across him previously, one story, I think, in an anthology of Irish writing, but not enough to form a proper impression. Now I have and there is no doubt in my mind that he will last as one of the great masters of the medium. He writes with such amazing fluency, beautiful limpid prose with a simple realism that reminds me so much of Chekhov. His work is rich in gentle irony with slight overtones of sadness, of empty lives and frustrated hopes.
His stories are mostly set in England or Ireland, often among the most marginal people, those on the edges of society, people often buffeted by an uncertain fate, unsure of who they are and where they are going. Yes, there are elements of pathos and melancholy, offset quite often by an undercurrent of humour. This is the thing about life, something the best writers have always understood: comedy is never that far removed from tragedy.
Some of his female characters caused me to laugh out loud at points, including the impossible Mrs da Tanka in A Meeting in Middle Age, the first in the collection, who teams up with the unfortunate Mr Mileson, a sort of agency detective, in a hotel together to spend the night, thereby providing grounds for a divorce in the days when such matters were complicated. Yes, they team up together in a way that a lion teams up with a gazelle!
In general Trevor shapes characters, in complexity or simplicity, who are totally believable. He is there as a narrator, as a third presence, only in the lightest possible way. He does not ‘create’ his people; he allows them to create themselves, to build themselves up through their own words and actions. There is little in the way of a narrator’s prologue; this is life unfolding as we go along, as fate works away.
The language, the use of words, is quite delicious: precise, beautiful, simple and elegant. There is nothing in the least artificial about Trevor’s prose style, which has directness and a sense of realism that I so admire, largely free of a tangled undergrowth of adjectives, something that only the very best writers can command. For the most part these are small and intimate dramas, not covering a huge range of possible situations, and yet paradoxically immense. In over eighty stories at no point did I feel that I was going over the same ground: each situation seemed unique and fresh.
Did I have any favourites? Well, yes, I suppose I did, though I find it immensely difficult to make a distinction in that having favourites seems to suggest that those not selected were somehow less worthy. At over 1200 pages long this is a compendium of favourites. I should make special mention, though, of Beyond the Pale, where a woman is confronted with the tragedy of Irish history, confronted by a legacy of love, loss and terrible bitterness. The tale she tells destroys a lying idyll. And then there is Matilda’s England, a story in three parts, an enchanting and poignant narrative of time and tide and fortune, of happy highways where people went and can never come again.
I sit here in here now in her drawing-room, and may perhaps become as old as she was. Sometimes I walk up to the meadows where the path to school was, but the meadow isn’t there any more. There are rows of coloured caravans, and motor-cars and shacks. In the garden I can hear the voices of people drifting down to me, and the sound of music from their wireless sets. Nothing is like it was.
This is immediately followed by Torridge, quite different in tone, with a bitingly humorous ending, one that completely dismantles the comforting illusions of a nauseatingly self-satisfied group of old school chums.
These are just a few examples. I could go on and on but there is really not much point. I can really only pay proper tribute to Trevor by retelling his tales one by one. You can do justice, if you are minded to, in reading them for yourselves.
October 25, 2017
First of all, let me begin by saying that William Trevor was probably not a human being but a machine which could print masterpieces. Although this book is a collection of all his stories, it reads a lot like a selection. In the entire 1260 pages there were only two stories that I found weak, and a very large number that I found to be groundbreaking masterpieces. Trevor is definitely a writer at the same level of the greatest short story writers of all time, along with giants like O Henry, Chekhov, Hemingway, Carver, or Mansfield. While I really love Alice Munro, I’d give Nobel to Trevor in a heartbeat over her. This man is a giant.
Secondly, although you can find a common theme in all of Trevor’s stories – loneliness, betrayal, secrets that people keep, denial – and create an idea of what a Trevor-like story is like – usually a plain looking protagonist embarks on a deceptively ordinary life until the complex and extraordinary truth behind it is revealed – there is a very wide variety of characters and plots and styles, reading this gigantic book never gets boring and repetitive. I think all of Trevor’s stories are ultimately about the extraordinary nature of ordinary life, but this extraordinary aspect reveals itself sometimes in a single sentence in seemingly plotless stories about a couple arriving at the wrong destination or a woman seducing a man among a group of tourists in Isfahan, or the extraordinary might reveal itself in the form of a psychopathic child or an abusive mother, or maybe in the scene of a murder. Another common theme is the fallibility of our judgments and presumptions, and many stories tell the tale of the disillusionment, of those false presumptions being shattered.
Overall, a very small number of writers have the extreme depth and perception of Trevor when it comes to human psychology, in all its complexity. While historical and political and cultural forces sometimes penetrate the world of these stories – especially the problem of Irish civil war – mostly the stories remain at the level of an individual epic or tragedy, giving Trevor a universal taste sorely missing in writers since great classics.
It took me from February to October to finish this book. During this time, it became a part of my life. Its stories will continue to haunt you and color the way you perceive the world. I know that I will be returning to these stories.
William Trevor, beyond doubt, is one of the greatest giants of literature not only of our time, but ever. I can see his stories being taught in school four hundred years from now.
Secondly, although you can find a common theme in all of Trevor’s stories – loneliness, betrayal, secrets that people keep, denial – and create an idea of what a Trevor-like story is like – usually a plain looking protagonist embarks on a deceptively ordinary life until the complex and extraordinary truth behind it is revealed – there is a very wide variety of characters and plots and styles, reading this gigantic book never gets boring and repetitive. I think all of Trevor’s stories are ultimately about the extraordinary nature of ordinary life, but this extraordinary aspect reveals itself sometimes in a single sentence in seemingly plotless stories about a couple arriving at the wrong destination or a woman seducing a man among a group of tourists in Isfahan, or the extraordinary might reveal itself in the form of a psychopathic child or an abusive mother, or maybe in the scene of a murder. Another common theme is the fallibility of our judgments and presumptions, and many stories tell the tale of the disillusionment, of those false presumptions being shattered.
Overall, a very small number of writers have the extreme depth and perception of Trevor when it comes to human psychology, in all its complexity. While historical and political and cultural forces sometimes penetrate the world of these stories – especially the problem of Irish civil war – mostly the stories remain at the level of an individual epic or tragedy, giving Trevor a universal taste sorely missing in writers since great classics.
It took me from February to October to finish this book. During this time, it became a part of my life. Its stories will continue to haunt you and color the way you perceive the world. I know that I will be returning to these stories.
William Trevor, beyond doubt, is one of the greatest giants of literature not only of our time, but ever. I can see his stories being taught in school four hundred years from now.
July 12, 2021
I've been reading this one for some time. It's a tome and needed to be taken in blocks of time.
William Trevor certainly could write about people. He covers all ages and sexes living in England or Ireland. Some of the stories are bleak, some humorous but mostly his characters live in marginalised worlds experiencing sadness, death and loneliness. Thoroughly enjoyed him.
William Trevor certainly could write about people. He covers all ages and sexes living in England or Ireland. Some of the stories are bleak, some humorous but mostly his characters live in marginalised worlds experiencing sadness, death and loneliness. Thoroughly enjoyed him.
October 10, 2012
On November 1, 1992 Viking published the entire first seven collections of short stories of one William Trevor, called the "greatest living writer of short stories" by Booker prizewinning Irish author John Banville. This awesome tome has 1296 pages. The NY Times Book Review calls the stories "treasures of gorgeous writing, brilliant dialogue, and unforgettable lives."
For a taste of Trevor, may I recommend a smaller Penquin paperback entitled IRELAND (1998) that contains two of my favorite stories, "The Paradise Lounge" and "The Ballroom of Romance." This sampling relates "...unforgettable lives" not dysfunctional families and provides a vivid, almost painful at times, picture of relationships in a setting evoking a strong sense of place.
In his story "The Paradise Lounge" Trevor uses the warm and friendly atmosphere of an Irish hotel pub to parallel the romantic lives of two Irishwomen. For thirty five years Miss Doheny, local spinster, has "strolled through the town on Saturday evening" to the Paradise Lounge in Keegan's Railway Hotel to meet her friends, the Meldrums. At the time of the story, the quiet conviviality of place allows Miss Doheny a silent interaction with a younger woman, an outsider in the lounge with her married lover. Here's Trevor's description of the setting:
The bar was a dim, square lounge with a scattering of small tables... Ashtrays advertised Guinness, beer-mats Heineken. Sunlight touched the darkened glass in one of two windows, drawing from it a glow that was no unlike the amber gleam of whiskey. Behind the bar itself the rows of bottles, spirits upside down above their global measures, glittered pleasantly as a center-piece, their reflections gaudy in a cluttered mirror. The room had a patterned carpet, further patterned with cigarette burns and a diversity of stains. The Paradise Lounge...had been titled in a moment of hyperbole by the grandfather of the present proprietor....
(Most material for this posting came from a final college paper, THE IRISH SENSE OF PLACE: Setting in the Short Story, written in 1987.)
Enjoy
Jane
For a taste of Trevor, may I recommend a smaller Penquin paperback entitled IRELAND (1998) that contains two of my favorite stories, "The Paradise Lounge" and "The Ballroom of Romance." This sampling relates "...unforgettable lives" not dysfunctional families and provides a vivid, almost painful at times, picture of relationships in a setting evoking a strong sense of place.
In his story "The Paradise Lounge" Trevor uses the warm and friendly atmosphere of an Irish hotel pub to parallel the romantic lives of two Irishwomen. For thirty five years Miss Doheny, local spinster, has "strolled through the town on Saturday evening" to the Paradise Lounge in Keegan's Railway Hotel to meet her friends, the Meldrums. At the time of the story, the quiet conviviality of place allows Miss Doheny a silent interaction with a younger woman, an outsider in the lounge with her married lover. Here's Trevor's description of the setting:
The bar was a dim, square lounge with a scattering of small tables... Ashtrays advertised Guinness, beer-mats Heineken. Sunlight touched the darkened glass in one of two windows, drawing from it a glow that was no unlike the amber gleam of whiskey. Behind the bar itself the rows of bottles, spirits upside down above their global measures, glittered pleasantly as a center-piece, their reflections gaudy in a cluttered mirror. The room had a patterned carpet, further patterned with cigarette burns and a diversity of stains. The Paradise Lounge...had been titled in a moment of hyperbole by the grandfather of the present proprietor....
(Most material for this posting came from a final college paper, THE IRISH SENSE OF PLACE: Setting in the Short Story, written in 1987.)
Enjoy
Jane
May 10, 2012
Brilliant. The best short stories I have ever read. The range of characters, of misery, and of humor are absolutely incredible. Trevor can make you laugh while a pit of dread simultaneously opens in your gut. So typically Irish, that--after all, you never laugh so much as at an Irish wake.
A few characteristic lines to give you the flavor:
"As she did every morning after breakfast, Mrs. Abercrombie recalled her husband's death."
"She was a woman like a sack of something, Jenny considered, with thick, unhealthy looking legs."
Characters are isolated from each other in most of these stories; if there are happy marriages, they are dismissed in a line and attention returned to the miserable ones, or the malicious ones, or the broken ones. People are stingy, or mean, or psychotically anxious in social situations, or just averagely unpleasant, or lonely or misunderstood. Somehow, despite this, in 1261 pages I never got sick of them, they are so richly drawn and fully fleshed.
If you aren't going to plod through all 1261 pages, but would rather dip in here and there, here are a few of my recommendations if you want to get a good sampling of Trevor's powers:
A Meeting in Middle Age
The Penthouse Apartment
In at the Birth
The Hotel of the Idle Moon
The Mark-2 Wife
A Choice of Butchers
Another Christmas
Attracta
Being Stolen From
A Trinity
Kathleen's Field
A few characteristic lines to give you the flavor:
"As she did every morning after breakfast, Mrs. Abercrombie recalled her husband's death."
"She was a woman like a sack of something, Jenny considered, with thick, unhealthy looking legs."
Characters are isolated from each other in most of these stories; if there are happy marriages, they are dismissed in a line and attention returned to the miserable ones, or the malicious ones, or the broken ones. People are stingy, or mean, or psychotically anxious in social situations, or just averagely unpleasant, or lonely or misunderstood. Somehow, despite this, in 1261 pages I never got sick of them, they are so richly drawn and fully fleshed.
If you aren't going to plod through all 1261 pages, but would rather dip in here and there, here are a few of my recommendations if you want to get a good sampling of Trevor's powers:
A Meeting in Middle Age
The Penthouse Apartment
In at the Birth
The Hotel of the Idle Moon
The Mark-2 Wife
A Choice of Butchers
Another Christmas
Attracta
Being Stolen From
A Trinity
Kathleen's Field
August 16, 2011
This is one of those books that will always be on my night table as I read and reread these gems. Excellence in short story writing is a rare talent and the fact that William is a fellow Irishman is only a grateful coincidence! Until my mid-life I had considered Anton Chekhov as the king of short stories and while he will never be dethroned William Trevor is sitting squarely at his right hand and only a little lower in the pantheon. Describing Trevor's short story style is impossible and analysis is akin to demeaning the talent. Yes he can be parochial ( often Irish locations) but never parochial in his themes. In short stories when in juts a few short page the characters are so well drawn that you are instantly attached is indeed a great art. Trevor is one of those writers that in my humble opinion is a better short story writer than a novelist just as Colm Tobin is a far better novelist than a short story writer, different talent and different views of the world. This a large book (in fact my edition runs to 2 volumes) over 1300 pages, and I would defy any reader to just read one of these short stories without the desire to return for more!!
April 18, 2011
These are the best short stories I have ever read. In just a few pages, Mr. Trevor creates an entire universe. I am enjoying this collection so much that I am only read a story a day and decided to not finish this at this time. That way I can return to it and read a new story. This is simply the best. Any person who is a fan of short stories must read these. And if you don't like short stories, you will still like these stories since he tells a novel in a matter of pages.
June 8, 2020
William Trevor
The Collected Stories
This volume contains a very large collection of stories. Although Trevor published many other short stories since 1992 so this is not as comprehensive as the book’s length might otherwise indicate.
While I like Trevor’s writing I did not fall in love with most of the stories. I bought this book last year and it took a really long time to get through it. I can say that not much action transpires in most of these stories or in some cases that the action has happened in the past so the reader is left to piece together what happens. Because of this, Trevor’s writing is nuanced to create the drama. Sometimes it works and sometimes not.
Nearly all of the hundred stories are set in County Cork with nary a description of the landscape so this was also a challenge for me. The most common theme is a plot centered indoors on a family unit where one of the parents is having an affair. There is also a common thread focused on boarding schools.
Here are five stories that I really enjoyed.
1. A Choice of Butchers
A boy realizes his father’s butcher is a much better man than his own father. Probably my favorite story. Trevor is very adept at writing from a child’s perspective — and that is not meant as a criticism.
2. Death in Jerusalem
Two brothers are on a religious pilgrimage to Israel and Rome. They grow apart after news of their mother’s death reaches them when one brother behaves very callously.
3. Attracta
A recent murder triggers a delayed realization for an aging school marm. Her students are baffled by her recent behavior.
4. Running Away
Husband has an affair with a younger woman. Middle aged wife leaves but the husband becomes ill — and he is conveniently sorry about what happened.
5. Family Sins
Classmate invites friend up to his estate for a summer break. Classmate divulges too many personal details about his family history to his new friend. It eventually becomes clear that their relationship has no future. Slightly disturbing story. Probably my second favorite story.
3.5 stars.
The Collected Stories
This volume contains a very large collection of stories. Although Trevor published many other short stories since 1992 so this is not as comprehensive as the book’s length might otherwise indicate.
While I like Trevor’s writing I did not fall in love with most of the stories. I bought this book last year and it took a really long time to get through it. I can say that not much action transpires in most of these stories or in some cases that the action has happened in the past so the reader is left to piece together what happens. Because of this, Trevor’s writing is nuanced to create the drama. Sometimes it works and sometimes not.
Nearly all of the hundred stories are set in County Cork with nary a description of the landscape so this was also a challenge for me. The most common theme is a plot centered indoors on a family unit where one of the parents is having an affair. There is also a common thread focused on boarding schools.
Here are five stories that I really enjoyed.
1. A Choice of Butchers
A boy realizes his father’s butcher is a much better man than his own father. Probably my favorite story. Trevor is very adept at writing from a child’s perspective — and that is not meant as a criticism.
2. Death in Jerusalem
Two brothers are on a religious pilgrimage to Israel and Rome. They grow apart after news of their mother’s death reaches them when one brother behaves very callously.
3. Attracta
A recent murder triggers a delayed realization for an aging school marm. Her students are baffled by her recent behavior.
4. Running Away
Husband has an affair with a younger woman. Middle aged wife leaves but the husband becomes ill — and he is conveniently sorry about what happened.
5. Family Sins
Classmate invites friend up to his estate for a summer break. Classmate divulges too many personal details about his family history to his new friend. It eventually becomes clear that their relationship has no future. Slightly disturbing story. Probably my second favorite story.
3.5 stars.
March 15, 2022
I've never been a fan of short stories. But I like Elizabeth Strout's novels, and in an interview she said she loved the work of writer William Trevor. I'd never heard of him, but figured I'd try a collection of his work.
When the book arrived in the mail and turned out to be a 1200+ page tome that fell to the floor with a thud, I was certain I'd made a mistake. There's no way I'd read all those short stories.
I read the first one. Then the next. The stories moved. They felt intimate and sharp. And each one felt different than the rest. They surprised me. So, as the pandemic of 2020 rolled on, I kept rolling with William Trevor.
Two years later, I've finished the book. Never would I have guessed that it'd be my pandemic go-to book, a kind of security blanket, where I could escape and meet all kinds of interesting people. These aren't happy stories — none of them, really — but they delivered what Trevor says a great short story should: a burst of truth.
I'm grateful that in a time of so much bad news, this will be one of the bright spots I'll remember: discovering Trevor's work, and the incredible art of short stories.
When the book arrived in the mail and turned out to be a 1200+ page tome that fell to the floor with a thud, I was certain I'd made a mistake. There's no way I'd read all those short stories.
I read the first one. Then the next. The stories moved. They felt intimate and sharp. And each one felt different than the rest. They surprised me. So, as the pandemic of 2020 rolled on, I kept rolling with William Trevor.
Two years later, I've finished the book. Never would I have guessed that it'd be my pandemic go-to book, a kind of security blanket, where I could escape and meet all kinds of interesting people. These aren't happy stories — none of them, really — but they delivered what Trevor says a great short story should: a burst of truth.
I'm grateful that in a time of so much bad news, this will be one of the bright spots I'll remember: discovering Trevor's work, and the incredible art of short stories.
August 9, 2019
A collection of 85 short stories (over 1261 pages) from a great writer, unfortunately no longer with us. He was a writer's writer and I remember reading someone said he had learnt writing from him. Compared sometimes with Chekhov, I think technically Trevor was much more advanced in how he structured his short stories. Most of them, despite their short length, read like a complete full size novel, with great deal of details and tension contained in each of them. He often structured his stories as a set of puzzles, where the first pages made sense only after reading the full story. His stories often jump in time, back and forward, with some events occurring at different times interlinked with each other. His stories are often populated by odd or maladjusted characters. This differs him from Chekhov, who had focused mainly on the average or common people.
The Trevor's stories should be analysed in all the writing classes to learn about his often brilliant writing techniques.
The Trevor's stories should be analysed in all the writing classes to learn about his often brilliant writing techniques.
July 26, 2010
The variety and texture in these gems by the greatest short story writer still living (and still published in the New Yorker) make this collection a reason to be stranded on a desert island. If this fat book were a floatation device, I’d jump ship and never be seen again.
This book inspired me to write, to experience the joy of creating my own community of lovable humans, foibles and all.
This book inspired me to write, to experience the joy of creating my own community of lovable humans, foibles and all.
January 11, 2011
Amazing. Though these stories are set in Ireland, England, and Scotland for the most part, and the scenery is lovingly described and the way of life very clearly presented, they could be happening anywhere -- the human emotion and complexity of relationships and inner worlds is as well described as anything I've ever read. These stories suck you in and leave you thinking. I've never read better. This book took me a while to get through because it is so hefty, but it was well worth the time and the read, and I intend to read more of his work in the future. Simply marvelous, nuanced and tender and funny and frustrating and complicated and poignant -- he doesn't miss a trick. Dialogue is pitch-perfect, characters are easy to hear and see, and Trevor can convey more in one sentence than many writers can do in a whole page.
February 8, 2008
Trevor can seem quiet and traditional, but he's really rather brilliantly subversive in the way he manages to step away from authorial pronouncement and just let the characters reveal themselves. So much contemporary Irish literature is steeped in shamrocks, bogs, and sentimental blarney, but not Trevor's Ireland: this is social- and class-consciousness at its sharpest. Everything's good in this collection--for my money, Trevor is simply incapable of writing a bad story. As just one example, see the devastating "Teresa's Wedding," where Trevor depicts oppression and the limits of hope in a few short pages.
December 19, 2016
No reader should be deprived of William Trevor. So what if the book is over 1200 pages? So what if I really didn't read all the stories? Most stories contain remarkable and memorable characters with dialogue so wonderfully original, his writing cannot be compared to any other writer. (There are those that say Chekhov; if pressed I might say Alice Munro.) Trevor died just a few weeks ago which prompted me to pick up this (paperback) brick of a book. I don't think he has ever gotten the attention he deserved. I feel the short story is his strength, though his novels are well done, they rarely feel as strong as these stories.
June 27, 2022
There is such a thing as the Chekhovian short story--terse, understated, simple in its decorum to match the typically middle-class characters who populate its plots. And it is very proper to name this sub-genre for Chekhov. But only because he predates William Trevor, who works this type of story to perfection over and over again. One could devise a master class in the craft of writing just from his opening and closing paragraphs.
So, if you love short stories, or even if you only think you might, read William Trevor's. You won't want them ever to end.
So, if you love short stories, or even if you only think you might, read William Trevor's. You won't want them ever to end.
October 20, 2011
At nearly 1,300 pages this is the best book ever. One day I couldn't stop reading and read 500 pages. Mr. Trevor's Selected Stories was listed as one of the top 5 on the New York Times list last year - this is better - lots more to read! He is compared to Alice Munro and rightly so as he can really tell a wonderful insightful tale all in just a few pages. A must read.
December 23, 2017
Hmm, very mixed. Maybe four 5-star stories, but lots more 2s. A great many women who go mad, awkward parties, and infidelity. I much prefer his novels.
June 13, 2023
Massive, obviously. I'll just keep plowing through as the year goes by. Have not read one story I did not enjoy and that was not finely honed. Great stuff.
March 25, 2018
This is a fantastic collection of short stories that has kept me fascinated for much of the three years I spent dipping in and out of its 1200+ pages of varied and masterfully written tales. I am hard pressed to find a single dud story in this hefty volume, and what is more amazing is that this collection only contains Trevor’s extensive oeuvre up to the early 90s. It even includes his novella, Matilda’s England which fully deserves a review of its own as an independent work. Trevor’s skill at unraveling the subtleties in relationships, like the malice and evil hiding behind fine manners and social niceties, and making something seemingly peripheral stand out and take centrestage, are all very much evident in these stories.
The Irish background and setting of the stories are evident in the little histories and traditions that surface now and then, though never overwhelming the narrative, which remain firmly fixed on the foibles of the human heart. Be it the schoolgirl infatuated with her Literature teacher with a sordid past, hoping that she could be part of the present narrative in “Mr Tennyson”, or the recently widowed Irish rector who welcomes home his estranged daughter but is increasingly concerned about the agenda of her Cockney-spewing male companion with a strangely militant knowledge of Irish history in “Autumn Sunshine”, they are at heart stories about the unwieldiness of relationships, especially the father-daughter relationship in the latter story.
In another father-daughter pairing, “On the Zattere”, a recently widowed man visits Venice with his adult daughter who had moved in to keep him company and they each experience their respective losses and articulate them differently. The daughter is a little resentful of his apparently debonair attitude, as if having forgotten his wife and the significance of the places they used to visit in Venice together, while she struggles with the end of a lengthy romance. They find that they are unable to communicate, each physically present but each not understanding the other.
At times, the macabre surfaces in the most unexpected places. In “The Teddy-bears’ Picnic”, a seemingly innocuous story about a pair of newlyweds’ quarrel that over a picnic that shows up the deep chasm between the couple, leads to a childhood memory of a dangerous stunt that the husband had pulled as a boy, all for the sake of getting vengeful attention back on himself, revealing his pathological side. That these baser instincts are surfacing again portend horrifying consequences.
Trevor’s sleight of hand in subtle scene changes is also very much apparent in “The Time of Year”, where a shy history student, Valerie, with a tragic backstory, relives the past even as she sits in the living room of her professor’s house at a pre-Christmas party she had been coerced to attend. The way the scene shifts is captured in the following passage: “… in the room the students and the Professor were shadows of a kind, the music a distant piping. The swish of wind was in the room, and the shingle, cold on her bare feet; so were the two flat stones they’d placed on their clothes to keep them from blowing away”, where the reader is transported from the living room party to a shore where the tragic incident had happened.
There are no promises of firm answers or fair endings in Trevor’s stories, and if anything, they reveal the helplessness of ordinary people trying their best to do what is right. In “Being Stolen From”, middle-aged Bridget finds the young mother of the girl she had adopted at her door, demanding for the return of her child. In the space of a mere fifteen pages, Trevor shows us Bridget’s intense loneliness, having been abandoned by her philandering husband of 20 years, as she struggles to hold on to her adopted child, and yet knowing she would ultimately be asked to “do the right thing”, through the hesitation in the people whom she trusts would help her.
Not one to shy away from sexually charged topics either, despite the conservative background of most of his characters, the revelation of such aspects of their lives is all the more shocking and yet reassuringly authentic. The tone is totally devoid of condemnation but only of understanding and empathy. It could be the coupling of a wealthy widow with her late husband’s employee in “Bodily Secrets”, that is more a mutually beneficial transaction than marital companionship, or hints of illicit relationships between boarding school boys in “A School Story”. Likewise, there is no judgment of the young woman on a adulterous farewell weekend at “The Paradise Lounge” in the dilapidated railway town, when she acknowledges a kindred spirit in a much older woman at the bar, both in circumstances vastly different and yet strangely similar.
Unconventional relationships and unexpected meetings are also seen in these stories. In “A Trinity”, a benign boss sponsors a young couple’s belated honeymoon but the strange undercurrents in their relationship with the old man rise to the surface when the couple ends up with a wrong tour group in an entirely different holiday destination. In “The Third Party”, two men meet at a bar to talk about one of their wives who is the other’s mistress, calmly and civilly discussing the next step as if it was an everyday occurrence.
Memories of lost opportunities or unspoken feelings are dealt with in “In Love with Adriadne” and “The Printmaker”, whether it is an impossible relationship between a young governess and her employer, or a young medical student with his landlady’s reticent daughter, they make indelible marks in the respective protagonists’ lives that they never quite recover from.
The family is not always the refuge it purports to be, even when tragedy strikes. In “A Husband’s Return”, Maura Brigid is doubly wronged by the abandonment by her husband with her flighty sister Bernadette, but as the story progresses, we find that it is so easy to resort to victim blaming when tragedy unfolds, especially when unbalanced family dynamics are involved. On the other hand, family reunions are never quite what they seem as well. More often than not, perfectly ordinary people are repulsed by their family, with or without good reason. In “Coffee With Oliver”, a divorcee thinks his daughter has finally come to seek him out and is disappointed when he realizes it was all a coincidence and that she does not welcome any contact with him. The reader’s initial sympathies for the estranged father are thwarted when they get to the heart of his smallish flaws and realize they are indicative of a larger problem, without even his full cognizance of his culpability in the failure of his marriage and his rejection by his daughter.
Trevor’s beautiful prose shines through in all of these stories, and his preternatural ability to inhabit any of his characters, regardless of their age, gender or background, makes this a timeless literary gem.
The Irish background and setting of the stories are evident in the little histories and traditions that surface now and then, though never overwhelming the narrative, which remain firmly fixed on the foibles of the human heart. Be it the schoolgirl infatuated with her Literature teacher with a sordid past, hoping that she could be part of the present narrative in “Mr Tennyson”, or the recently widowed Irish rector who welcomes home his estranged daughter but is increasingly concerned about the agenda of her Cockney-spewing male companion with a strangely militant knowledge of Irish history in “Autumn Sunshine”, they are at heart stories about the unwieldiness of relationships, especially the father-daughter relationship in the latter story.
In another father-daughter pairing, “On the Zattere”, a recently widowed man visits Venice with his adult daughter who had moved in to keep him company and they each experience their respective losses and articulate them differently. The daughter is a little resentful of his apparently debonair attitude, as if having forgotten his wife and the significance of the places they used to visit in Venice together, while she struggles with the end of a lengthy romance. They find that they are unable to communicate, each physically present but each not understanding the other.
At times, the macabre surfaces in the most unexpected places. In “The Teddy-bears’ Picnic”, a seemingly innocuous story about a pair of newlyweds’ quarrel that over a picnic that shows up the deep chasm between the couple, leads to a childhood memory of a dangerous stunt that the husband had pulled as a boy, all for the sake of getting vengeful attention back on himself, revealing his pathological side. That these baser instincts are surfacing again portend horrifying consequences.
Trevor’s sleight of hand in subtle scene changes is also very much apparent in “The Time of Year”, where a shy history student, Valerie, with a tragic backstory, relives the past even as she sits in the living room of her professor’s house at a pre-Christmas party she had been coerced to attend. The way the scene shifts is captured in the following passage: “… in the room the students and the Professor were shadows of a kind, the music a distant piping. The swish of wind was in the room, and the shingle, cold on her bare feet; so were the two flat stones they’d placed on their clothes to keep them from blowing away”, where the reader is transported from the living room party to a shore where the tragic incident had happened.
There are no promises of firm answers or fair endings in Trevor’s stories, and if anything, they reveal the helplessness of ordinary people trying their best to do what is right. In “Being Stolen From”, middle-aged Bridget finds the young mother of the girl she had adopted at her door, demanding for the return of her child. In the space of a mere fifteen pages, Trevor shows us Bridget’s intense loneliness, having been abandoned by her philandering husband of 20 years, as she struggles to hold on to her adopted child, and yet knowing she would ultimately be asked to “do the right thing”, through the hesitation in the people whom she trusts would help her.
Not one to shy away from sexually charged topics either, despite the conservative background of most of his characters, the revelation of such aspects of their lives is all the more shocking and yet reassuringly authentic. The tone is totally devoid of condemnation but only of understanding and empathy. It could be the coupling of a wealthy widow with her late husband’s employee in “Bodily Secrets”, that is more a mutually beneficial transaction than marital companionship, or hints of illicit relationships between boarding school boys in “A School Story”. Likewise, there is no judgment of the young woman on a adulterous farewell weekend at “The Paradise Lounge” in the dilapidated railway town, when she acknowledges a kindred spirit in a much older woman at the bar, both in circumstances vastly different and yet strangely similar.
Unconventional relationships and unexpected meetings are also seen in these stories. In “A Trinity”, a benign boss sponsors a young couple’s belated honeymoon but the strange undercurrents in their relationship with the old man rise to the surface when the couple ends up with a wrong tour group in an entirely different holiday destination. In “The Third Party”, two men meet at a bar to talk about one of their wives who is the other’s mistress, calmly and civilly discussing the next step as if it was an everyday occurrence.
Memories of lost opportunities or unspoken feelings are dealt with in “In Love with Adriadne” and “The Printmaker”, whether it is an impossible relationship between a young governess and her employer, or a young medical student with his landlady’s reticent daughter, they make indelible marks in the respective protagonists’ lives that they never quite recover from.
The family is not always the refuge it purports to be, even when tragedy strikes. In “A Husband’s Return”, Maura Brigid is doubly wronged by the abandonment by her husband with her flighty sister Bernadette, but as the story progresses, we find that it is so easy to resort to victim blaming when tragedy unfolds, especially when unbalanced family dynamics are involved. On the other hand, family reunions are never quite what they seem as well. More often than not, perfectly ordinary people are repulsed by their family, with or without good reason. In “Coffee With Oliver”, a divorcee thinks his daughter has finally come to seek him out and is disappointed when he realizes it was all a coincidence and that she does not welcome any contact with him. The reader’s initial sympathies for the estranged father are thwarted when they get to the heart of his smallish flaws and realize they are indicative of a larger problem, without even his full cognizance of his culpability in the failure of his marriage and his rejection by his daughter.
Trevor’s beautiful prose shines through in all of these stories, and his preternatural ability to inhabit any of his characters, regardless of their age, gender or background, makes this a timeless literary gem.
November 6, 2024
Ok it took me a while to get through this one, not really surprising considering the number of stories and they're all pretty relaxed reads. What's impressive is the number of characters, each with distinct personal histories but all perfectly ordinary. There's no huge, dramatic events here, but the stories are all clearly about something (I've struggled in the past with slice-of-life tales that don't have a distinct point or end other than 'this happened on this day' and 'this is where I decided to stop writing').
There are recurrent themes - being Irish, being poor, being being awkward at dinner parties, being unfaithful or tricked, being bored or dissatisfied. And for a male writer, writing in the 1960s/70s, there are a lot of stories written sympathetically from a female perspective (although they may not seem particularly progressive today).
I probably wouldn't choose to read these again all in one go, but it's one I'll hang on to and will occasionally dip into to read a story at random.
There are recurrent themes - being Irish, being poor, being being awkward at dinner parties, being unfaithful or tricked, being bored or dissatisfied. And for a male writer, writing in the 1960s/70s, there are a lot of stories written sympathetically from a female perspective (although they may not seem particularly progressive today).
I probably wouldn't choose to read these again all in one go, but it's one I'll hang on to and will occasionally dip into to read a story at random.
December 16, 2022
DNF. This book is over 1000 pages. I read bunch of the short stories. Some were 2* some 3 and some 4. I settled on 3*.
Want to read
May 3, 2020#2
In the Volvo on the way to Barnes they kept repeating that he was the funniest man they’d ever met. He was nicer than the man in the news cinema, Susie said. He was quite like him, though, Deirdre maintained: he was looking for company in just the same way, you could see it in his eyes. ‘He was staggering,’ Susie said. ‘I thought he was going to die.’
#48
How could she tell? Mrs Cecil thought. How could it be even remotely possible to see half-way across the huge salon, to ascertain through the duskiness – beyond the pools of light demanded by the bridge tables – that the teapot had marked the top of an escritoire? Mrs Cecil was sitting closer to the escritoire than Mrs Vansittart and couldn’t see a thing.
#49
Cecilia kept her head averted. At least the light wasn’t strong. There was a certain amount of stained glass in the windows and only weak bulbs burned in the globe-topped brass lamps that were set at intervals along the mahogany bar. She tried not to smile in case the inkling in her face had something to do with that.
#53
‘You know I’ve got Binky,’ she said, following him to where the drinks were and pouring herself some gin. ‘I’ve told you hundreds of times how I took him everywhere. If you don’t like him in the bedroom I’ll put him away. I didn’t know you didn’t like him.’
In the Volvo on the way to Barnes they kept repeating that he was the funniest man they’d ever met. He was nicer than the man in the news cinema, Susie said. He was quite like him, though, Deirdre maintained: he was looking for company in just the same way, you could see it in his eyes. ‘He was staggering,’ Susie said. ‘I thought he was going to die.’
#48
How could she tell? Mrs Cecil thought. How could it be even remotely possible to see half-way across the huge salon, to ascertain through the duskiness – beyond the pools of light demanded by the bridge tables – that the teapot had marked the top of an escritoire? Mrs Cecil was sitting closer to the escritoire than Mrs Vansittart and couldn’t see a thing.
#49
Cecilia kept her head averted. At least the light wasn’t strong. There was a certain amount of stained glass in the windows and only weak bulbs burned in the globe-topped brass lamps that were set at intervals along the mahogany bar. She tried not to smile in case the inkling in her face had something to do with that.
#53
‘You know I’ve got Binky,’ she said, following him to where the drinks were and pouring herself some gin. ‘I’ve told you hundreds of times how I took him everywhere. If you don’t like him in the bedroom I’ll put him away. I didn’t know you didn’t like him.’
October 15, 2018
Yes, 1300 pages of fine short stories that get into the hearts and minds of rather normal if marginalized and discontented Irish and British middle-class characters grappling with the uncertainties and crosscurrents of society and life in the second half of the 20th century.
Several of the first few stories involved alcohol, and usually too much of it, but Trevor thereafter generally avoided that element. This, along with my puzzlement at his description of some faces as "sharp", are mere quibbles. The level of writing is consistently high, and a dry humor trumps gloom and any dark undercurrents. Some stories assume the viewpoints of women. I cannot fairly judge whether Trevor is wholly accurate, but he is equally sympathetic.
I recommend taking these two or three at a time, not because of too much likeness but rather that even steady excellence is subject to the law of diminishing marginal returns. I read this free on archiv.org and was able to recheck it several times (each for two weeks) in succession as there was no waiting list.
Several of the first few stories involved alcohol, and usually too much of it, but Trevor thereafter generally avoided that element. This, along with my puzzlement at his description of some faces as "sharp", are mere quibbles. The level of writing is consistently high, and a dry humor trumps gloom and any dark undercurrents. Some stories assume the viewpoints of women. I cannot fairly judge whether Trevor is wholly accurate, but he is equally sympathetic.
I recommend taking these two or three at a time, not because of too much likeness but rather that even steady excellence is subject to the law of diminishing marginal returns. I read this free on archiv.org and was able to recheck it several times (each for two weeks) in succession as there was no waiting list.
November 13, 2021
Wow, this is a big book: 1,261 pages, 85 short stories. But don't let this hold you back. I thoroughly enjoyed reading at least 25 of them before returning the book to the library.
I chose this book on recommendation of an Elizabeth Strout [NYTimes interview]. William Trevor was born in County Cork in 1928. His novels have won many prizes & a zillion stories were published in the New Yorker Magazine. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary Commander of the British Empire in recognition of his services to literature. These stories are about 'ordinary people' [Irish & English] in normal life situations, the domestic spaces and habits and characters' physical traits described beautifully, as well as the places they visit. 'Honeymoon in Tramore' is a typical Trevor story, the odd description of a new marriage against the dreariness of a grim Irish resort town in the late 40s in provincial Ireland— but even this darkish story has a flicker of light.
I chose this book on recommendation of an Elizabeth Strout [NYTimes interview]. William Trevor was born in County Cork in 1928. His novels have won many prizes & a zillion stories were published in the New Yorker Magazine. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary Commander of the British Empire in recognition of his services to literature. These stories are about 'ordinary people' [Irish & English] in normal life situations, the domestic spaces and habits and characters' physical traits described beautifully, as well as the places they visit. 'Honeymoon in Tramore' is a typical Trevor story, the odd description of a new marriage against the dreariness of a grim Irish resort town in the late 40s in provincial Ireland— but even this darkish story has a flicker of light.
February 12, 2018
I started this book in 2016 and ended it in 2018. Yes, partially because it's the longest book ever written, but, more importantly, it was a perfect book to pick up and read a story or two a night, and I never really wanted it to end. His stories are empathetic, tightly plotted, sad as all hell, and sometimes quite bleakly hilarious.
The blurb on my edition of this book calls him "The Greatest Living Short Story Writer" and while that may no longer be the case, I think there is an argument to be made that he is one of the best short story writers of the modern era.
The blurb on my edition of this book calls him "The Greatest Living Short Story Writer" and while that may no longer be the case, I think there is an argument to be made that he is one of the best short story writers of the modern era.
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