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Nights at the Alexandra
Hailed as "probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language" by The New Yorker and "an extraordinarily mellifluous writer, seemingly incapable of composing an ungraceful sentence" by The New York Times Book Review , William Trevor is one of our most elegaic chroniclers of loss.
Set in a provincial Irish town against the backdrop of the Second World War, Nights at the Alexandra is a masterpiece of short fiction. Tracing the reminiscences of a fifty-eight-year-old Irish cinema owner named Harry, the story recounts the years during Harry's adolescence when he forges an unlikely friendship with an ÈmigrÈ couple recently arrived in his small town. Gently imperious yet strikingly beautiful, Frau Messinger, a young British woman married to a much older German, introduces a measure of color into Harry's otherwise black-and-white existence.
Disappointed by his dull family and his stifling boarding school, Harry soaks up Frau Messinger's stories of her youth and indulges her numerous flights of fancy. When Mr. Messinger announces his plans to build the town's first cinema and asks Harry to work its ticket window, Harry for the first time begins to imagine a life of possibility rather than privation. But the young man's newfound sense of himself comes not without its price, as William Trevor masterfully limns the border between innocence and experience, creating a subtle portrait of an adolescent moment that has the power to shape an entire lifetime.
Set in a provincial Irish town against the backdrop of the Second World War, Nights at the Alexandra is a masterpiece of short fiction. Tracing the reminiscences of a fifty-eight-year-old Irish cinema owner named Harry, the story recounts the years during Harry's adolescence when he forges an unlikely friendship with an ÈmigrÈ couple recently arrived in his small town. Gently imperious yet strikingly beautiful, Frau Messinger, a young British woman married to a much older German, introduces a measure of color into Harry's otherwise black-and-white existence.
Disappointed by his dull family and his stifling boarding school, Harry soaks up Frau Messinger's stories of her youth and indulges her numerous flights of fancy. When Mr. Messinger announces his plans to build the town's first cinema and asks Harry to work its ticket window, Harry for the first time begins to imagine a life of possibility rather than privation. But the young man's newfound sense of himself comes not without its price, as William Trevor masterfully limns the border between innocence and experience, creating a subtle portrait of an adolescent moment that has the power to shape an entire lifetime.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
21 people are currently reading
359 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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November 20, 2025
Typical Trevor. An unmarried man in a small Irish village is 58, reflecting back on his youth. Like other Trevor characters, (I think of Lucy in Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault), an outsider would think his life dull, friendless and wasted. But, like Lucy, he seems satisfied and content with his life even though he appears to be sexless and friendless. And, like Lucy, the man is Protestant who grew up in Catholic Ireland. (As was Trevor, growing up in County Cork, Ireland, a country where only 4% of the population is Protestant – surely that had an impact on his life and his writing).
The Alexandra of the title is a movie theater. It was named after a young woman, an outsider in the village, who befriended the boy when he was 15. The couple are a May-December pair; the wife 27; the husband 62. (Trevor tells us all their ages for a reason.)
The mystery to me, that is never explained in the book, is why did this young woman, in fact the couple - since her husband encouraged the boy’s visits and the friendship - take on this 15 year-old boy as their best/only friend in the village? The boy is at their estate constantly. She confides in him her life story; she writes him long letters when he is away at school. She’s beautiful. Obviously the boy falls in love with her. But their relationship is chaste, a touch of the hand or a peck on the cheek at Christmas – that’s it.
Both members of the couple are outsiders: he’s German and has fled his home country, disgusted and embarrassed by Hitler. She’s English. But they can’t flee to England because, as a German national, he would be put in a detention camp.
Eventually the boy inherits the movie theater that the husband built in the village. He spends the rest of his life running it. His family tells him “the movie theater ruined him.” And maybe it did. He can only dwell in the past. It says something when the narrator tells us that “his most cherished possession” is a cheesy tie tack the woman gave him more than 40 year ago.
This book is a novella – 95 pages in a small format. A good read – maudlin, like many others of Trevor -- but still a good read.
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
The Children of Dynmouth
photo of Irish village from tuskergirls.files.wordpress.com
photo of William Trevor from avondhupress.ie
The Alexandra of the title is a movie theater. It was named after a young woman, an outsider in the village, who befriended the boy when he was 15. The couple are a May-December pair; the wife 27; the husband 62. (Trevor tells us all their ages for a reason.)
The mystery to me, that is never explained in the book, is why did this young woman, in fact the couple - since her husband encouraged the boy’s visits and the friendship - take on this 15 year-old boy as their best/only friend in the village? The boy is at their estate constantly. She confides in him her life story; she writes him long letters when he is away at school. She’s beautiful. Obviously the boy falls in love with her. But their relationship is chaste, a touch of the hand or a peck on the cheek at Christmas – that’s it.
Both members of the couple are outsiders: he’s German and has fled his home country, disgusted and embarrassed by Hitler. She’s English. But they can’t flee to England because, as a German national, he would be put in a detention camp.
Eventually the boy inherits the movie theater that the husband built in the village. He spends the rest of his life running it. His family tells him “the movie theater ruined him.” And maybe it did. He can only dwell in the past. It says something when the narrator tells us that “his most cherished possession” is a cheesy tie tack the woman gave him more than 40 year ago.
This book is a novella – 95 pages in a small format. A good read – maudlin, like many others of Trevor -- but still a good read.
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
The Children of Dynmouth
photo of Irish village from tuskergirls.files.wordpress.com
photo of William Trevor from avondhupress.ie
August 23, 2021
Deste modo, acabámos por vir sozinhos até ao nosso santuário, Harry, condenados a viver com a culpa de o ter feito. Quem foge nunca foge sozinho, a culpa e o remorso acompanham-no onde quer que vá.
“Noites no Alexandra” remeteu-me para os livros de dois dos meus autores preferidos, “Uma Mulher Perdida”, de Willa Cather e “O Destino de um Homem”, de W. Somerset Maugham, pois também aqui há um jovem que frequenta a casa de um casal considerado forasteiro e se encanta pela mulher, a qual não é vista com bons olhos pela comunidade local. Por mero acaso, Harry presta ajuda a Frau Messinger, uma jovem inglesa que durante toda a infância foi a parente que vivia na casa dos outros de favor e que, agora, se refugiou numa pequena localidade da Irlanda juntamente com o marido alemão, muito mais velho do que ela. A partir daí, ele torna-se visita habitual em Cloverhill e assiste à construção do Alexandra, o cinema que Herr Messinger construiu para homenagear a mulher que ama.
Dei-me muitas vezes ao prazer de carregar no botão que desvendava o écran, levando as cortinas verdes e amarelas a abrirem-se lentamente com as borboletas estampadas a desaparecerem por entre as suas dobras à medida que elas se afastavam mais e quando a luz do dia invadia a sala, entrando pelas portas de saída, os tons ambarinos das paredes ganhavam novas e diversas tonalidades.
William Trevor é um escritor com quem tenho uma relação inusitada. Sem nunca ter dado 5 estrelas a nenhuma das suas obras, admiro as suas histórias discretas, e as personagens que compõe ficam-me sempre na memória.
O destino fez de mim o fantasma de um interlúdio. De vez em quando, digo isso mesmo na cidade, repito isso mesmo às pessoas que me interpelam. Só para explicar, só para tentar explicar.
“Noites no Alexandra” remeteu-me para os livros de dois dos meus autores preferidos, “Uma Mulher Perdida”, de Willa Cather e “O Destino de um Homem”, de W. Somerset Maugham, pois também aqui há um jovem que frequenta a casa de um casal considerado forasteiro e se encanta pela mulher, a qual não é vista com bons olhos pela comunidade local. Por mero acaso, Harry presta ajuda a Frau Messinger, uma jovem inglesa que durante toda a infância foi a parente que vivia na casa dos outros de favor e que, agora, se refugiou numa pequena localidade da Irlanda juntamente com o marido alemão, muito mais velho do que ela. A partir daí, ele torna-se visita habitual em Cloverhill e assiste à construção do Alexandra, o cinema que Herr Messinger construiu para homenagear a mulher que ama.
Dei-me muitas vezes ao prazer de carregar no botão que desvendava o écran, levando as cortinas verdes e amarelas a abrirem-se lentamente com as borboletas estampadas a desaparecerem por entre as suas dobras à medida que elas se afastavam mais e quando a luz do dia invadia a sala, entrando pelas portas de saída, os tons ambarinos das paredes ganhavam novas e diversas tonalidades.
William Trevor é um escritor com quem tenho uma relação inusitada. Sem nunca ter dado 5 estrelas a nenhuma das suas obras, admiro as suas histórias discretas, e as personagens que compõe ficam-me sempre na memória.
O destino fez de mim o fantasma de um interlúdio. De vez em quando, digo isso mesmo na cidade, repito isso mesmo às pessoas que me interpelam. Só para explicar, só para tentar explicar.
September 18, 2021
Harry was fifteen when the events of this book happened, but at this telling: I am a fifty-eight-year-old provincial. I have no children. I have never married.
When I finished this slim story, I immediately went back to that starting line. Stories that move you will make you do that. But then I realized that what followed just next might be the real start: 'Harry, I have the happiest marriage in the world! Please, when you think of me, remember that.' That is the voice of Frau Messinger, as precisely recalled as memory allows. But, The war had upset the Messingers' lives, she being an Englishwoman and he a German.
And one of them is dying. Is such love reserved for the dying?
Trevor has this way, that we are rooted in the fifteen-year-old narration. I felt myself coming of age again. It is only near book's end that I awakened with a start, when I heard the haunted voice of the grown man: Fate has made me the ghost of an interlude.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
The Alexandra of the title is Frau Messinger, but it is also the name of the movie theater Herr Messinger builds for her. Trevor says this about it:
Urney bars tasted better in its rosy gloom; embraces were romantic there. . . . My brothers did not snigger in the Alexandra; my father, had he ever gone there, would have at last been silenced.
Will we ever be able to go to the cinema again, and feel the lowered lights of expectations, of coming attractions?
When I finished this slim story, I immediately went back to that starting line. Stories that move you will make you do that. But then I realized that what followed just next might be the real start: 'Harry, I have the happiest marriage in the world! Please, when you think of me, remember that.' That is the voice of Frau Messinger, as precisely recalled as memory allows. But, The war had upset the Messingers' lives, she being an Englishwoman and he a German.
And one of them is dying. Is such love reserved for the dying?
Trevor has this way, that we are rooted in the fifteen-year-old narration. I felt myself coming of age again. It is only near book's end that I awakened with a start, when I heard the haunted voice of the grown man: Fate has made me the ghost of an interlude.
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
The Alexandra of the title is Frau Messinger, but it is also the name of the movie theater Herr Messinger builds for her. Trevor says this about it:
Urney bars tasted better in its rosy gloom; embraces were romantic there. . . . My brothers did not snigger in the Alexandra; my father, had he ever gone there, would have at last been silenced.
Will we ever be able to go to the cinema again, and feel the lowered lights of expectations, of coming attractions?
April 1, 2016
As well as being a very fine novelist, William Trevor is surely among the half dozen or so finest living exponents of the English-language short story, and when he is really firing on all cylinders – In stories like 'After Rain', 'The Day We Got Drunk on Cake', 'The Ballroom of Romance' or 'In Isfahan', to name just a few from dozens – he might very well be the best there is.
'Nights at the Alexandra', though a novella rather than a short story, can stand comfortably alongside these stories.
The story, about the various faces and facets of love, is simple, beautiful and profoundly moving: the coming-of-age of Harry, a middle-class protestant narrator, and the unlikely friendship forged with Frau Messinger, a lovely if somewhat fey young English woman who is married to a much older German man. Together they have moved to Ireland to escape the war, losing contact with beloved family members in the process. A love story of sorts develops, though it of the gentle, innocent variety, and plays out over several months, as Harry drifts back and forth from boarding school.
What elevates this little book to something special is the wonderfully pitched narrative voice, the slow unfurling of facts, the crafting (and especially the careful contrasting) of the characters, and as much as anything the clarity and utter truthfulness of Trevor's prose. The sentences keep a steady beat, and everything is so balanced that you can't fail to be taken by the force of the ending, even though you feel it coming several pages in advance. At his best, and for all the apparent simplicity of his style, he is simply spellbinding.
'Nights at the Alexandra', though a novella rather than a short story, can stand comfortably alongside these stories.
The story, about the various faces and facets of love, is simple, beautiful and profoundly moving: the coming-of-age of Harry, a middle-class protestant narrator, and the unlikely friendship forged with Frau Messinger, a lovely if somewhat fey young English woman who is married to a much older German man. Together they have moved to Ireland to escape the war, losing contact with beloved family members in the process. A love story of sorts develops, though it of the gentle, innocent variety, and plays out over several months, as Harry drifts back and forth from boarding school.
What elevates this little book to something special is the wonderfully pitched narrative voice, the slow unfurling of facts, the crafting (and especially the careful contrasting) of the characters, and as much as anything the clarity and utter truthfulness of Trevor's prose. The sentences keep a steady beat, and everything is so balanced that you can't fail to be taken by the force of the ending, even though you feel it coming several pages in advance. At his best, and for all the apparent simplicity of his style, he is simply spellbinding.
November 27, 2015
The perfect book. Simply perfect.
September 11, 2024
Told in the first person, this is a fictional memoir. When the story opens, it is WWII and Harry is about 15 or maybe a bit younger. He happens to be at the curb when a beautiful young wife asks him to help her with a battery for the wireless. Over the next pages, the friendship deepens.
William Trevor is a treasure. In this longish short story his characterizations of both Harry and the wife, who we learn is called Alexandra, are perfect. One can feel how Harry is still heart sore even after so many years have passed.
I never give such brevity 5 stars. Well, perhaps one should never say never.
William Trevor is a treasure. In this longish short story his characterizations of both Harry and the wife, who we learn is called Alexandra, are perfect. One can feel how Harry is still heart sore even after so many years have passed.
I never give such brevity 5 stars. Well, perhaps one should never say never.
August 14, 2013
"I am a fifty-eight year old provincial. I have no children. I have never married."
So this slender 99 page novel starts. What good would it do to comment on Trevor's control, the quality of his prose, the sureness of his storytelling?
I read this book last summer for the first time and due to some storytelling questions of my own decided to re-read it this afternoon. I'm glad I did. It stays so focused in moments while still using this backward looking atmospheric approach that combines the richness of an adolescent's experience with a longing that just barely walks this line, for me, of being too sentimental. It's a really big, emotional piece of work, amid all its restraint.
Clearly, I prefer novels like this--short, sharpened. I learned a lot from this one, and truly enjoyed it more the second time. Thank you, Mr. Trevor.
So this slender 99 page novel starts. What good would it do to comment on Trevor's control, the quality of his prose, the sureness of his storytelling?
I read this book last summer for the first time and due to some storytelling questions of my own decided to re-read it this afternoon. I'm glad I did. It stays so focused in moments while still using this backward looking atmospheric approach that combines the richness of an adolescent's experience with a longing that just barely walks this line, for me, of being too sentimental. It's a really big, emotional piece of work, amid all its restraint.
Clearly, I prefer novels like this--short, sharpened. I learned a lot from this one, and truly enjoyed it more the second time. Thank you, Mr. Trevor.
June 20, 2019
Nights at the Alexandra is a long short story, or a short novella, and this thin volume also includes two short stories: The Hill Batchelors, and The Ballroom of Romance. All of them are about filial duty fulfilled or otherwise, and are full of Trevor's usual (and wonderful) longing and nostalgia. He rarely puts a foot wrong.
January 22, 2016
A slim novel that packs a punch. The writing was beautiful, and the setting of a small Irish town against the backdrop of WWII was gorgeous and evocative, and the way Trevor makes you care about his characters in less than 100 pages is impressive. I'm usually more of a plot-driven reader so this isn't the type of book I usually like, but I loved Harry's voice and the way he describes his relationship with the Messingers and the construction (and reason behind the construction) of the Alexandra. This is a great book to read in an afternoon when you're between books and looking for something quick but substantial.
November 5, 2016
Nights at the Alexandra is beautiful, hazy, and sad but without regrets. The Ballroom of Romance is a short, thoughtful story on love and fate on the dance floor. The Hill Bachelors is atmospheric and echoing. Everything is perfect and quietly heartbreaking.
November 6, 2023
"We live and then we are forgotten...Surely that cannot be the end of us?"
Oh, my heart.
William Trevor is a master of the short story. Few of his novels break you the way his short stories do, but this novella is just perfect.
Heartbreaking, nostalgic, full of longing, and what Trevor does best: tales about beautiful people who don't quite fit in to society, that teach you a lesson about what it is to be human.
An absolute favourite I know from now I'll pick up year after year.
Love you forever, William Trevor.
Oh, my heart.
William Trevor is a master of the short story. Few of his novels break you the way his short stories do, but this novella is just perfect.
Heartbreaking, nostalgic, full of longing, and what Trevor does best: tales about beautiful people who don't quite fit in to society, that teach you a lesson about what it is to be human.
An absolute favourite I know from now I'll pick up year after year.
Love you forever, William Trevor.
April 14, 2024
If I have not said this enough already, let me say it again - I adore William Trevor, I can't get enough of his writing.
Nights At The Alexandra is really a novella about nothing much but Trevor transforms this 'nothing much' into something extraordinary. It's about memory, looking back with rose-tinted glasses and with nostalgia. Also about the pain of remembering, grieving over what had been once. There is so much restraint in Trevor's writing yet his stories always manage to draw tears from me. The compassion and tenderness he has for his most pathetic characters, the way he can bring these people alive in a few sentences - it's all just magical, emotional without being too sentimental. Somehow every time I read Trevor, it makes me look into my own life, even though the plot might be nothing resembling it. It's an uncomfortable feeling of course, this sense of being 'seen'. It's like the author compels you to bring the same tender lens to your own life like he brings to his ordinary characters.
Nights At The Alexandra is really a novella about nothing much but Trevor transforms this 'nothing much' into something extraordinary. It's about memory, looking back with rose-tinted glasses and with nostalgia. Also about the pain of remembering, grieving over what had been once. There is so much restraint in Trevor's writing yet his stories always manage to draw tears from me. The compassion and tenderness he has for his most pathetic characters, the way he can bring these people alive in a few sentences - it's all just magical, emotional without being too sentimental. Somehow every time I read Trevor, it makes me look into my own life, even though the plot might be nothing resembling it. It's an uncomfortable feeling of course, this sense of being 'seen'. It's like the author compels you to bring the same tender lens to your own life like he brings to his ordinary characters.
December 10, 2017
A series of three stories. The first Nights at the Alexandria is about an English woman and German living in Ireland during the Second World War. A young boy is befriended by the woman Frau Messinger and he visits them at their estate and house at Cloverhill. He does not want to live the life his parents does and end up running his fathers timber yard.
The woman i think adopts him in a remote way as her surrogate child and then gets unwell. Her husband as a gift builds the Alexandria a cinema for her in which the boy ultimately inherits. The story is about love, loneliness, death and acceptance of what life can bring you.
The Ballrooms of Romance is once again a story of loneliness and acceptance. Bridie is a woman who has been going to a dancehall for years. Her only escape from looking after her invalid father in the remote Irish countryside.
On this final visit she remembers the past and men she wanted to marry and how she is now too old to keep coming back. She accepts an offer of a layabout she sees her future with him and it looks a bleak one.
The Hill Bachelors follows the theme of loneliness. Paul one of several child comes back for his fathers funeral. He stays on to look after his elderly mother on the remote farm. He tries to find a wife but none want to live on the remote farm. In the end he accepts his future with a stoic heart.
The woman i think adopts him in a remote way as her surrogate child and then gets unwell. Her husband as a gift builds the Alexandria a cinema for her in which the boy ultimately inherits. The story is about love, loneliness, death and acceptance of what life can bring you.
The Ballrooms of Romance is once again a story of loneliness and acceptance. Bridie is a woman who has been going to a dancehall for years. Her only escape from looking after her invalid father in the remote Irish countryside.
On this final visit she remembers the past and men she wanted to marry and how she is now too old to keep coming back. She accepts an offer of a layabout she sees her future with him and it looks a bleak one.
The Hill Bachelors follows the theme of loneliness. Paul one of several child comes back for his fathers funeral. He stays on to look after his elderly mother on the remote farm. He tries to find a wife but none want to live on the remote farm. In the end he accepts his future with a stoic heart.
February 21, 2022
Life in rural areas always holds much more to it than meets the eyes. At least it does in Irish fiction, and especially so in the fiction of William Trevor. A house is not just a house, there are dreams and expectations there, things that should not have happened or that we would like to happen. And there is also a lot to think and reminisce about, mull over the past and be afraid of the future.
There is a lot of introspection and a lot of regret in Trevor's writing. In this collection of three stories, especially. A 58-year-old man looking back on his life and an encounter with a young woman when he was still a young boy that changed his life. A young woman in rural Ireland taking care of her father and a lack of an encounter that would change her life. A young man with all the wrong encounters who needs to move back to his home in rural Ireland. And it's just that - the encounters and connections and how important they are in our lives, how they change their courses. This is a collection of stories about being stuck in a small pond realising that the water is getting colder and it's getting darker and you don't remember where you left your bearings or how you can get home.
There is a lot of introspection and a lot of regret in Trevor's writing. In this collection of three stories, especially. A 58-year-old man looking back on his life and an encounter with a young woman when he was still a young boy that changed his life. A young woman in rural Ireland taking care of her father and a lack of an encounter that would change her life. A young man with all the wrong encounters who needs to move back to his home in rural Ireland. And it's just that - the encounters and connections and how important they are in our lives, how they change their courses. This is a collection of stories about being stuck in a small pond realising that the water is getting colder and it's getting darker and you don't remember where you left your bearings or how you can get home.
November 15, 2018
This is my first William Trevor and it may remain my favourite. It's the gentle story, told by a man in his fifties, about a time in his youth, when he is befriended by a fascinating woman, Frau Messinger, after doing a few tasks for her. Frau Messinger is an Englishwoman married to a German; they are living in rural Ireland to escape what would be their fate, during the second world war, if they lived in either England or Germany. Harry is fifteen, the son of poor Protestants, in his last year of school, with no prospects other than working in his father's timber yard.
Herr Messinger is building a cinema - the Alexandra - as a gift to his wife, whose health is failing and he offers Harry work there. Harry is only too happy to accept, despite the opposition of his family: his bitter, punishing mother, unimaginative father, resentful sister and two grandmothers who do not speak to each other. Harry does well, eventually owning the cinema, which, for a time, is a success.
But the real magic of Nights at the Alexandra lies in Trevor's writing. He manages to convey, without sentimentality, Harry's small-town world, his mean family life, the paucity of people in his life once his schooldays are ended and his few friends go their separate ways. And although there is a pervasive sadness in the novel, Harry's acceptance of his fate saves it from bathos or mawkishness. This is a tender coming of age, "first love" kind of novel. The Messingers become Harry's window to a wider world, of imagination and possibility; even if it cannot be fully realised, as he says at the end, "memory is enough".
Herr Messinger is building a cinema - the Alexandra - as a gift to his wife, whose health is failing and he offers Harry work there. Harry is only too happy to accept, despite the opposition of his family: his bitter, punishing mother, unimaginative father, resentful sister and two grandmothers who do not speak to each other. Harry does well, eventually owning the cinema, which, for a time, is a success.
But the real magic of Nights at the Alexandra lies in Trevor's writing. He manages to convey, without sentimentality, Harry's small-town world, his mean family life, the paucity of people in his life once his schooldays are ended and his few friends go their separate ways. And although there is a pervasive sadness in the novel, Harry's acceptance of his fate saves it from bathos or mawkishness. This is a tender coming of age, "first love" kind of novel. The Messingers become Harry's window to a wider world, of imagination and possibility; even if it cannot be fully realised, as he says at the end, "memory is enough".
December 23, 2017
a tender, beautiful, poignant and atmospheric piece of literature, absolutely the kind of writing i want to read, and deserve to read. the underlying sadness is just heart-breaking. i was speechless.
i just love, love, love, love this small book, so much. i wish i could read this kind of literature everyday. lets myself float about in a world of tender melancholy, the softness of beauty and sincerity. enjoys the quiet heartbreaks. cries, sometimes.
"i am a fifty-eight-year-old cinema proprietor without a cinema, yet when i sit among the empty seats memory is enough."
i just love, love, love, love this small book, so much. i wish i could read this kind of literature everyday. lets myself float about in a world of tender melancholy, the softness of beauty and sincerity. enjoys the quiet heartbreaks. cries, sometimes.
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March 17, 2019A lovely book, three stories of disconnection, with three characters out of step with those around them. All beautifully and carefully written.
December 28, 2019
Quiet measurements of crushing loneliness; perfect story craft as always. Everyone should read William Trevor.
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December 28, 2022It is a small limpid book that passed freely through me. The prose as graceful as its characters are not. Textured memory.
March 7, 2024
Found in a used bookstore at the end of a fantastic weekend. Felt like this story was waiting for me.
July 10, 2012
William Trevor has written two books of non-fiction: a memoir and what might be called a literary geography entitled A Writer's Ireland, which in a very conversational style traipses around that nation, visiting sites associated with Ireland's long literary tradition. Trevor takes us from Queen Medb's bedroom where pillowtalk inspires the Táin Bó Cúailnge to Flann O'Brien's Dublin of the early 1960s, using his humor and insight to show the landscape behind lit.
But there is also "William Trevor's Ireland", with its own inner and outer geography. The place is the young republic, rural small towns and large villages; the time is mid-20th Century, from the '40s through the early '60s; the class can vary, but not infrequently there is that minority within a minority: the poor Protestant family. Whether bank clerk or smallholder, draper or timber-dealer, Trevor looks at this small withering substrata of Irish society. Not part of the once-great Anglo-Irish Ascendancy who lorded over the Big Houses and great estates (as well as most political and judicial power prior to the Treaty), and somehow not fully a part of rising idependent nation with its Catholic majority. These are in fact, Trevor's own people: his father was a bank clerk, moved from town-to-town all during Trevor's youth. There is no doubt something in this personal history which so richly informs and moulds his Irish fiction.
And so it is with Nights at the Alexandra, where a middle-aged man is recalling his fifteen-year-old self, a boy who was selected to do messages for the exotic new folks in the neighbourhood of just one of those large villages in the hinterlands. It is the "Emergency", as neutral-Ireland called World War II; as non-combatants, they were nonetheless victims of the collapse in world trade, without petrol or tobacco or outlets for their agricultural products. An older German gentleman and his young British wife have bought one of the local estates, fleeing both their countries, neither of which would be hospitable to one of the spouses.
"The Alexandra" is a picture house Herr Messinger builds in the town, as a present to his wife. Having befriended them, young Harry is taken on first to man the box-office and later to run the place, much to the consternation of his opinionated and overbearing family. This is a story of first-love, of memory without regret, of a particularly Irish sense of "it is what it is"—a sense of resignation without any recrimination. A very loving and lovely little book.
But there is also "William Trevor's Ireland", with its own inner and outer geography. The place is the young republic, rural small towns and large villages; the time is mid-20th Century, from the '40s through the early '60s; the class can vary, but not infrequently there is that minority within a minority: the poor Protestant family. Whether bank clerk or smallholder, draper or timber-dealer, Trevor looks at this small withering substrata of Irish society. Not part of the once-great Anglo-Irish Ascendancy who lorded over the Big Houses and great estates (as well as most political and judicial power prior to the Treaty), and somehow not fully a part of rising idependent nation with its Catholic majority. These are in fact, Trevor's own people: his father was a bank clerk, moved from town-to-town all during Trevor's youth. There is no doubt something in this personal history which so richly informs and moulds his Irish fiction.
And so it is with Nights at the Alexandra, where a middle-aged man is recalling his fifteen-year-old self, a boy who was selected to do messages for the exotic new folks in the neighbourhood of just one of those large villages in the hinterlands. It is the "Emergency", as neutral-Ireland called World War II; as non-combatants, they were nonetheless victims of the collapse in world trade, without petrol or tobacco or outlets for their agricultural products. An older German gentleman and his young British wife have bought one of the local estates, fleeing both their countries, neither of which would be hospitable to one of the spouses.
"The Alexandra" is a picture house Herr Messinger builds in the town, as a present to his wife. Having befriended them, young Harry is taken on first to man the box-office and later to run the place, much to the consternation of his opinionated and overbearing family. This is a story of first-love, of memory without regret, of a particularly Irish sense of "it is what it is"—a sense of resignation without any recrimination. A very loving and lovely little book.
November 2, 2021
Along with roughly the first half of Trevor's backlist, this has been re-issued in a beautiful new edition by Penguin UK. This is a novella I hadn't been able to get hold of previously; my edition also includes the title stories from the story collections The Ballroom of Romance and The Hill Bachelors.
The stories are vintage Trevor: a teenager's viewpoint, thwarted love and the stunting effects of a small town upbringing. I don't think anyone has covered the latter - at least on our side of the Atlantic - quite so well as him.
The stories are vintage Trevor: a teenager's viewpoint, thwarted love and the stunting effects of a small town upbringing. I don't think anyone has covered the latter - at least on our side of the Atlantic - quite so well as him.
February 24, 2009
Simply but beautifully written, Trevor describes the attachment a teenage boy forms for a nearby couple composed of a young British woman married to a German about twice her age. Rumors begin in the neighborhood that he has a special attachment to the woman, but she just represents the kind of life that he would like to have had at home, his mother being demanding and two grandmothers living there but never speaking to each other. A quick read of a couple of hours, it's worthwhile.
December 14, 2017
This beautifully written novelette is a bit hard to classify. It's told in such a sensitive, deeply personal manner that although it's not an actual memoir, it might easily be taken for one. Certainly, it's infused with the very real and pervasive atmosphere of Trevor's own youth, growing up protestant in catholic Ireland. A very solitary man in late middle age recalls the experiences of his youth with affection, regret and peaceful resignation.
October 31, 2018
I highly recommend. Elegant, exquisite -- every positive adjective fits this book, event adjectives that don't begin with an e.
January 27, 2018
The photo of William Trevor on the back cover of the Penguin edition of this book shows the author learning to the left, arms folded, back to the wall, with a long-faced, tight-lipped expression on his face that evokes both defiance and resignation. It is as if he is saying, "I give up, but I don't like it." Many of his characters seems to embody that same attitude.
In the titular novella (actually, a longish story), the main character, Harry, remarks: "I am a fifty eight year old cinema proprietor without a cinema, yet when I sit among the empty seats memory is enough."
"Nights at the Alexandra," like many coming of age tales, explores a young man's relationship with an older woman, despite her being married and the disapproval of his family. What's unique, though, is that as the story unfolds, Harry begins to identify more and more with her husband, an expatriate German who is much older. As a testament to his love for his wife, the man decides to build a swanky new motion picture cinema in this remote Irish village. Everybody in this town, it seems, is trying to escape something, and looking for a diversion.
Two additional stories reinforce that theme. In "The Ballroom of Romance," an unmarried woman who cares for her elderly father lives for Saturday night dances, even though as the years go by, she sees her prospects for marriage, much less happiness, fading steadily. In "The Hill Bachelors," the only unmarried sibling in his family realizes, when his father dies, that he has no choice but to return home to live with his aging mother. Of that fate, he reflects: "Paulie harbored no resentment, not being a person who easily did: going back to the farmhouse was not the end of the world. The end of the world had been to hear, in Meagher's back bar, that life on a farm did not attract Patsy Finucane."
These stories are strong, but plaintive, leaving readers to wonder if anybody living in mid-twentieth century Ireland was happy, or believed that it even mattered.
In the titular novella (actually, a longish story), the main character, Harry, remarks: "I am a fifty eight year old cinema proprietor without a cinema, yet when I sit among the empty seats memory is enough."
"Nights at the Alexandra," like many coming of age tales, explores a young man's relationship with an older woman, despite her being married and the disapproval of his family. What's unique, though, is that as the story unfolds, Harry begins to identify more and more with her husband, an expatriate German who is much older. As a testament to his love for his wife, the man decides to build a swanky new motion picture cinema in this remote Irish village. Everybody in this town, it seems, is trying to escape something, and looking for a diversion.
Two additional stories reinforce that theme. In "The Ballroom of Romance," an unmarried woman who cares for her elderly father lives for Saturday night dances, even though as the years go by, she sees her prospects for marriage, much less happiness, fading steadily. In "The Hill Bachelors," the only unmarried sibling in his family realizes, when his father dies, that he has no choice but to return home to live with his aging mother. Of that fate, he reflects: "Paulie harbored no resentment, not being a person who easily did: going back to the farmhouse was not the end of the world. The end of the world had been to hear, in Meagher's back bar, that life on a farm did not attract Patsy Finucane."
These stories are strong, but plaintive, leaving readers to wonder if anybody living in mid-twentieth century Ireland was happy, or believed that it even mattered.
April 16, 2023
The esteemed Irish writer William Trevor is frequently cited as a master of the short story, and rightly so. His stories are spellbinding – humane, compassionate and beautifully written. He has a way of getting into the hearts and minds of his characters with insight and precision, laying bare their deepest preoccupations for the reader to see. These skills are very much in evidence in Nights at the Alexandra, a slim collection comprising the titular novella and two short stories, The Ballroom of Romance and The Hill Bachelors. I simply adored these achingly melancholy pieces, exquisitely expressed in Trevor’s deceptively simple, understated prose. As in Clare Keegan’s novellas Foster and Small Things Like These, there’s a luminosity or purity to Trevor’s stories, an emotional truthfulness that’s hard to capture in a review.
The collection opens with the titular novella in which fifty-eight-year-old Harry looks back on the days of his youth during WW2 – commonly known as the ‘Emergency’ in Ireland. At fifteen, Harry forms an unlikely but deeply touching friendship with Frau Messinger, a young Englishwoman who has come to live in Ireland with her much older German husband. The Messingers, who are comfortably off, have moved to Cloverhill to escape the war, Ireland being neutral and a place of relative safety.
Harry’s traditional Protestant parents are suspicious of the Messingers, viewing them as Jewish or amoral in some way (neither of which is actually true). Meanwhile, Harry runs errands for Frau Messinger, marvelling at the time he spends in her intoxicating company, listening to tales of her youth and other such pleasures. Herr Messinger seems equally fond of Harry, sharing his plans to build a beautiful cinema in the town – it will be called the Alexandra, a wedding gift for his wife.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2023...
The collection opens with the titular novella in which fifty-eight-year-old Harry looks back on the days of his youth during WW2 – commonly known as the ‘Emergency’ in Ireland. At fifteen, Harry forms an unlikely but deeply touching friendship with Frau Messinger, a young Englishwoman who has come to live in Ireland with her much older German husband. The Messingers, who are comfortably off, have moved to Cloverhill to escape the war, Ireland being neutral and a place of relative safety.
Harry’s traditional Protestant parents are suspicious of the Messingers, viewing them as Jewish or amoral in some way (neither of which is actually true). Meanwhile, Harry runs errands for Frau Messinger, marvelling at the time he spends in her intoxicating company, listening to tales of her youth and other such pleasures. Herr Messinger seems equally fond of Harry, sharing his plans to build a beautiful cinema in the town – it will be called the Alexandra, a wedding gift for his wife.
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2023...
September 11, 2025
I seldom reread; I should do it more often. One novella I return to every few years is "Nights at the Alexandra" by William Trevor. This was my first exposure to Trevor's work; I've read much of his writings since. The story is narrated by Harry, now fifty-eight, reminiscesing about his encounters as a boy of fifteen with a couple newly-arrived in his small village in Ireland. Herr Messinger and Frau Messinger emigrated from Germany during the war. He is decades older than she; she is a beautiful young Englishwoman. Frau Messinger utilizes Harry for odd jobs and errands. She develops a friendship with Harry, sharing with him the story of her upbringing and move to Germany where she met and married Herr Messinger. They find in each other a closeness that is mature and natural despite the differences in age and social class. Herr Messinger is gentle with Harry and tolerant of his acquaintence with his wife. Harry's interactions with his own family, who are provincial and rigid, stand in sharp relief to the sort of life lived by the Messingers.
Herr Messinger decides to build a cinema in the village as a gift to his wife, who is enamoured with films. The cinema becomes a meaningful reminder of Harry's memories of Frau Messinger, recalled many years later.
I am still captivated by the luminousness of Trevor's prose. Harry writes as an adult decades later but Trevor conveys the perspective and sentiments of a fifteen-year-old boy with sublety and sweetness. His relationship with Frau Messinger has shaped him as an adult. This is not a coming of age story; it is about a brief and unlikely friendship that carries warm memories thoughout his life.
This edition contains two other Trevor short stories: "The Ballroom of Romance" and "The Hill Bachelors". Both stories quietly reveal how the everyday circumstances of family life in rural Ireland limit and determine the choices and outcomes of lives that people are able to live.
Herr Messinger decides to build a cinema in the village as a gift to his wife, who is enamoured with films. The cinema becomes a meaningful reminder of Harry's memories of Frau Messinger, recalled many years later.
I am still captivated by the luminousness of Trevor's prose. Harry writes as an adult decades later but Trevor conveys the perspective and sentiments of a fifteen-year-old boy with sublety and sweetness. His relationship with Frau Messinger has shaped him as an adult. This is not a coming of age story; it is about a brief and unlikely friendship that carries warm memories thoughout his life.
This edition contains two other Trevor short stories: "The Ballroom of Romance" and "The Hill Bachelors". Both stories quietly reveal how the everyday circumstances of family life in rural Ireland limit and determine the choices and outcomes of lives that people are able to live.
June 2, 2020
Trevor writes about life, simply lived. He celebrates everything that seems mundane, his plots about people living lives that we might expect to encounter as a matter of course. The gift comes not in highly decorated plotting, but in beautiful language and evocative pacing. The volume I read contained the novella "Nights at the Alexandra" as well as the short stories "The Ballroom of Romance" and "The Hill Bachelors." I absolutely loved all three stories. All three were about single people in rural Ireland who, through common circumstances, were destined to remain that way, largely through no fault of their own. These stories are about familial obligation, though contrasted, as the two short stories are about those who fulfill their obligations to their families, and the novella is about someone who rebels against these obligations in romantic and understandable ways. Every time I read Trevor I admire his writing more.
June 6, 2021
This is a novella written by Trevor in 1987 - as far as I'm concerned, the quintessential brilliant Trevor. No gimmicks, no slow agonising descriptions. Just a fantastic evocation of a world long gone, of small neighbourhood cinemas and romance, of strong bonds with foreigners who fascinate us without totally understanding them. A masterpiece.
The other two stories in the collection I read - The Ballroom of Romance and The Hill Bachelors - were good, but lacked the stroke of genius that makes Nights at the Alexandra a must read. I couldn't recommend it strongly enough. Up there with the best short fiction I know.
The other two stories in the collection I read - The Ballroom of Romance and The Hill Bachelors - were good, but lacked the stroke of genius that makes Nights at the Alexandra a must read. I couldn't recommend it strongly enough. Up there with the best short fiction I know.
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