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Selected Stories
A marvelous collection from "the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language" ( The New Yorker ).
Four-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, three-time winner of the Whitbread Prize, and five-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, William Trevor is one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Over a career spanning more than half a century, Trevor has crafted exquisitely rendered tales that brilliantly illuminate the human condition. Bringing together forty-eight stories from After Rain, The Hill Bachelors, A Bit on the Side , and Cheating at Canasta , this second volume of Trevor's collected fiction offers readers "treasures of gorgeous writing, brilliant dialogue, and unforgettable lives" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
Four-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, three-time winner of the Whitbread Prize, and five-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, William Trevor is one of the most acclaimed authors of our time. Over a career spanning more than half a century, Trevor has crafted exquisitely rendered tales that brilliantly illuminate the human condition. Bringing together forty-eight stories from After Rain, The Hill Bachelors, A Bit on the Side , and Cheating at Canasta , this second volume of Trevor's collected fiction offers readers "treasures of gorgeous writing, brilliant dialogue, and unforgettable lives" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
576 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2010
179 people are currently reading
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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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September 17, 2021
Trevor is indeed a master of the short story. This collection plumbs the depth and breadth of his efforts in the form.
The writer exerts strong narrative control of his stories, many of them written in omniscient voice with an Irish cadence. The shifts and climaxes are subtle, and often sad. The themes are adult relationships, immigration, guilt, religion, abuse, revolution and death. Trevor's Irish immigrants always fare badly in the new country, be that England or America, and they return to the home country impoverished and beaten. His guilt theme is woven around pivotal events in his characters' lives: sexual abuse by priests, adultery, even a murder committed in the past that casts its deathly shadow on the survivors. Many of the characters are middle-aged with plenty of emotional baggage and life experiences to draw from.
The religious divide in Ireland is brought to the fore in the story "Lost Ground" when the Catholic and Protestant priests meet on friendly terms, but realize that they are locked behind their ideological and socially conditioned walls. And the cloak-and-dagger world of the IRA is revealed in the creepily menacing "The Mourning."
Trevor conjures up interesting situations in which to play out his human dramas: there is no respect for the dead in "Sitting with the Dead," when an embittered housewife vents to the two sitters about her dead husband's limitations; the bastard lover and the abused wife make love in front of her drunk husband in the same hotel room in "Le Visiteur"; the cultural differences between the English and the Germans are revealed when an about-to-be-married couple play the "Telephone Game." The most powerful story for me was "The Piano Tuner's Wife," when the replacement wife has to alter her blind husband's view of the world in order to extinguish the powerful presence of his dead first wife.
Given the number of stories, this is a well-crafted collection that must be digested in small bytes. I will be returning to many of these stories to learn from them and to marvel in their subtle mastery.
The writer exerts strong narrative control of his stories, many of them written in omniscient voice with an Irish cadence. The shifts and climaxes are subtle, and often sad. The themes are adult relationships, immigration, guilt, religion, abuse, revolution and death. Trevor's Irish immigrants always fare badly in the new country, be that England or America, and they return to the home country impoverished and beaten. His guilt theme is woven around pivotal events in his characters' lives: sexual abuse by priests, adultery, even a murder committed in the past that casts its deathly shadow on the survivors. Many of the characters are middle-aged with plenty of emotional baggage and life experiences to draw from.
The religious divide in Ireland is brought to the fore in the story "Lost Ground" when the Catholic and Protestant priests meet on friendly terms, but realize that they are locked behind their ideological and socially conditioned walls. And the cloak-and-dagger world of the IRA is revealed in the creepily menacing "The Mourning."
Trevor conjures up interesting situations in which to play out his human dramas: there is no respect for the dead in "Sitting with the Dead," when an embittered housewife vents to the two sitters about her dead husband's limitations; the bastard lover and the abused wife make love in front of her drunk husband in the same hotel room in "Le Visiteur"; the cultural differences between the English and the Germans are revealed when an about-to-be-married couple play the "Telephone Game." The most powerful story for me was "The Piano Tuner's Wife," when the replacement wife has to alter her blind husband's view of the world in order to extinguish the powerful presence of his dead first wife.
Given the number of stories, this is a well-crafted collection that must be digested in small bytes. I will be returning to many of these stories to learn from them and to marvel in their subtle mastery.
March 4, 2017
The first lines of the first story and the last lines of the last story in this collection give evidence of William Trevor’s remarkable gift, craft, and consistency: “Violet married the piano tuner when he was a young man. Belle married him when he was old.” And: “He knows where he is with all this; he knows what he’s about, as he does in other aspects of his tidy life. And yet this morning he likes himself less than he likes his friend.” (His friend is a withdrawn, lost soul working as a dishwasher in Paris whose friends and family thought was long dead.) Everything in between, how he develops that first story, delicately, compellingly, precisely and how he arrives at the context laden power of the realization of the character in the last story, discretely, almost secretly, building evidence for the moral case for guilt’s impact on life as he does, confirms and re-confirms Trevor’s standing as one of the greats of world literature.
Whilst alive, he was generally cited along with Alice Munro as the two indisputable giants of the supposedly once dead short story form. Trevor was—he passed in 2016—a master storyteller. In his lifetime, he published well more than a dozen novels in addition to almost a dozen individual short story collections. The 48 stories gathered here are from the four individual collections that followed publication of his Collected Stories, which contains stories from his first seven story collections. Most are set in Ireland or England, a few in France or Italy but feature English or Irish characters on holiday or in exile. The Troubles are touched on in several powerful stories.
But mainly Trevor seems to put ordinary people in ordinary situations that are stretched by domestic crises of one kind or another—death, failed relationships, lack of economic opportunity, transfer of generational responsibilities, decline of faith, a disappearing way of life (farmers and clergymen, among others). Issues of responsibility, change, and human dignity in the face of uncertainty, loss, fading traditions, and betrayed loyalties are all treated with insight and nuanced understanding of human nature. And it is all done with a breathtaking economy of craft. Seldom, if at all, is there a false word, a superfluous scene, a less than credible or fully realized character.
The credibility of characters doesn’t mean the characters are constrained by type or a rigid conformity to expected behavior. Trevor always seems to surprise us somewhere in the story when an individual takes his or her own understandings, makes this choice or that, or where he or she takes up or puts down the sword of battle with fate or circumstance. I liked all 48 stories but at least a full half of them left a remarkable impression on me and will stick with me and lead me to re-reading. Trevor deserved his place next to Munro and now, with his passing, rightfully takes it next to Chekov in that small group photo of the world’s greatest short story writers.
Whilst alive, he was generally cited along with Alice Munro as the two indisputable giants of the supposedly once dead short story form. Trevor was—he passed in 2016—a master storyteller. In his lifetime, he published well more than a dozen novels in addition to almost a dozen individual short story collections. The 48 stories gathered here are from the four individual collections that followed publication of his Collected Stories, which contains stories from his first seven story collections. Most are set in Ireland or England, a few in France or Italy but feature English or Irish characters on holiday or in exile. The Troubles are touched on in several powerful stories.
But mainly Trevor seems to put ordinary people in ordinary situations that are stretched by domestic crises of one kind or another—death, failed relationships, lack of economic opportunity, transfer of generational responsibilities, decline of faith, a disappearing way of life (farmers and clergymen, among others). Issues of responsibility, change, and human dignity in the face of uncertainty, loss, fading traditions, and betrayed loyalties are all treated with insight and nuanced understanding of human nature. And it is all done with a breathtaking economy of craft. Seldom, if at all, is there a false word, a superfluous scene, a less than credible or fully realized character.
The credibility of characters doesn’t mean the characters are constrained by type or a rigid conformity to expected behavior. Trevor always seems to surprise us somewhere in the story when an individual takes his or her own understandings, makes this choice or that, or where he or she takes up or puts down the sword of battle with fate or circumstance. I liked all 48 stories but at least a full half of them left a remarkable impression on me and will stick with me and lead me to re-reading. Trevor deserved his place next to Munro and now, with his passing, rightfully takes it next to Chekov in that small group photo of the world’s greatest short story writers.
January 10, 2011
This collects (not selects, as the title suggests) Trevor's four most recent books of stories in their entirety. Of the 48 stories, not one may be called second-rate, though some are clearly standouts.
Trevor's writing is straightforward, his register quiet. Charles McGrath said in a Times review: "He is not a clever or metaphorical writer. Nothing in a Trevor story is “like” something else; things are what they are." These stories are as close to real life as fiction gets. Trevor's mastery of scene and detail is so refined that it is not until the last couple sentences of a story that his economy, forethought and grace are revealed; just at the end, the story blossoms.
Subjects include infidelity, marriage, piety, childhood, some references to Irish history; but it really doesn't matter what the story is about. Though he always keeps the plot moving, it is the richness of character that is the mark of a Trevor story. And for this reason, while he's also a novelist, he is a short story master. "A short story," Trevor said in a Guardian interview, "is a glimpse of someone's life or someone's relationship. You can take a relationship and almost photograph it. And there it is. Often that relationship can get lost in the bigger shape of the novel. I like to isolate it and really look at the characters."
If you don't want to read all 500+ pages of this volume, pick up one of the original story collections it draws from: After Rain, The Hill Bachelors, A Bit on the Side, and Cheating at Canasta.
Trevor's writing is straightforward, his register quiet. Charles McGrath said in a Times review: "He is not a clever or metaphorical writer. Nothing in a Trevor story is “like” something else; things are what they are." These stories are as close to real life as fiction gets. Trevor's mastery of scene and detail is so refined that it is not until the last couple sentences of a story that his economy, forethought and grace are revealed; just at the end, the story blossoms.
Subjects include infidelity, marriage, piety, childhood, some references to Irish history; but it really doesn't matter what the story is about. Though he always keeps the plot moving, it is the richness of character that is the mark of a Trevor story. And for this reason, while he's also a novelist, he is a short story master. "A short story," Trevor said in a Guardian interview, "is a glimpse of someone's life or someone's relationship. You can take a relationship and almost photograph it. And there it is. Often that relationship can get lost in the bigger shape of the novel. I like to isolate it and really look at the characters."
If you don't want to read all 500+ pages of this volume, pick up one of the original story collections it draws from: After Rain, The Hill Bachelors, A Bit on the Side, and Cheating at Canasta.
October 18, 2018
Trevor is a fine writer, subtle and quiet, and these stories are all carefully structured with precision and depth. His characters are rendered with great delicacy and he writes of a wide range of complex types and he's pretty much a master of the short story form. I'd have given this a 5 except that Alice Munro gets the 5s.
His writing is gorgeous. Full of psychological insight, the stories stayed with me long after I'd put the book down.
His writing is gorgeous. Full of psychological insight, the stories stayed with me long after I'd put the book down.
April 22, 2025
Отличное открытие 2025 года в жанре рассказа
Автор из Ирландии, но учился и жил в Лондоне. Пишет про войну между этими двумя странами. Но в центре его рассказов - человек. Он не скатывается до банальных «Англия империя и агрессор - захватывает маленькую Ирландию» или «Ирландия была слаба, внутренне раздроблена, не способна управлять и поэтому потеряла часть своих территорий»
Он пишет про то, что случается с человеком, когда люди вокруг делятся на 2 лагеря.
Но суть для Тревора не в том, чья концепция, чье государство правее. Для него важно показать уважение к каждому персонажу: будь он за Независимую Ирландию или за Английскую Империю. Персонажей становиться жаль, их судьбы касаются меня. Для меня это многое говорит за уровень писателя.
Автор из Ирландии, но учился и жил в Лондоне. Пишет про войну между этими двумя странами. Но в центре его рассказов - человек. Он не скатывается до банальных «Англия империя и агрессор - захватывает маленькую Ирландию» или «Ирландия была слаба, внутренне раздроблена, не способна управлять и поэтому потеряла часть своих территорий»
Он пишет про то, что случается с человеком, когда люди вокруг делятся на 2 лагеря.
Но суть для Тревора не в том, чья концепция, чье государство правее. Для него важно показать уважение к каждому персонажу: будь он за Независимую Ирландию или за Английскую Империю. Персонажей становиться жаль, их судьбы касаются меня. Для меня это многое говорит за уровень писателя.
March 28, 2021
Oh, I loved these stories! I appreciate Trevor’s delicate way of telling a story, admire the way he can go into great detail yet tell a tale so succinctly. A wonderful read, at my own pace, as only short stories allow.
February 25, 2022
A bit of a slog getting through all 567 pages. Nothing struck me as outstanding.
September 1, 2011
This book, Selected Stories, is, as the title suggests, a selection of William Trevor's stories. There are 48 stories here, which is an indication of the man's prolificacy. Most of the stories are about ten pages long, with one major exception I'll get to. They are prosaically titled: some titles include: "A Day," "Three People," "The Children," "The Room," "A Friendship." Almost all of them are set in Ireland (Trevor's birthplace) and England (his current residence), although a few are set in France. America is seen, as it long has in the Irish imagination, as over the rainbow.
Trevor's stories are so intricate and carefully written that one pictures him using a jeweler's loupe as he writes. Almost every one of the stories--in fact, perhaps all of them--deal with some sort of loneliness. Whether it's widowhood, children who are separated by divorce, affairs, or strangers bumping into each other, the sense of sorrow and despair. There are numerous priests involved, and Protestants living in a Catholic country .There aren't a lot of happy people in these stories.
Occasionally I would read one of the stories and realize I didn't know what was going on, and would only pick up the thread half-way through. "Death of a Professor," about a professor who has his obituary erroneously printed in a newspaper, is one of the few stories with a droll sense of comedy, but I didn't figure it out until partially through it. I think many of his stories require a second read-through. Other stories hit the ground running. The best opening is from "A Friend in the Trade," about a business associate who has attached himself to a family: "They fell in love when A Whiter Shade of Pale played all summer. They married when Tony Orlando sang Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree. These times are faded memories now, hardly there at all, and they've forgotten Procol Harum and Suzi Quatro and Brotherhood of Man, having long ago turned to Brahms."
After finishing the book I flipped through it and jotted down 17 stories that I liked, not a bad batting average. I especially enjoyed "Child's Play," about two children who are forced together by marriage and form a fast friendship; "A Bit of Business," when a gang of burglars break into a house and tie up the elderly house sitter while he's watching the visit to Dublin by the Pope; "Three People," where a handyman invents an alibi to rescue a woman from a murder charge; "Good News," about a young girl who gets an acting job, but may have endured something very terrible on the set. Many of the stories have no resolution, not like we're used to. A terrific one called "Gilbert's Mother" details a woman who suspects her son of killing someone, but we never know if he did or not.
Others include "The Mourning," in which a young man is recruited into a bombing by the IRA; "Le Visiteur," a tale of a one-night stand among two people in France; "The Telephone Game," where a party takes a bad turn after a malicious prank; "An Evening Out," which may detail one of the worst blind dates in literature; "Big Bucks," which specifically deals with Irish emigration to America, and how it affects a relationship; and "The Dressmaker's Child," a wonderful tale about an auto mechanic who takes a Spanish couple to visit a statue of the Madonna, and on the way back may or may not have run over a young girl.
The masterpiece of this collection is the longest, called "Lost Ground." It is about a teenage boy, the presumed heir of his father's farm and a Protestant, who one day sees an apparition of a woman who calls herself St. Rosa. He tells his brother-in-law, a minister, who urges him to keep it a secret, but the boy feels the need to preach, and his family ends up locking him up. His older brother, a member of a Protestant militant group, takes an even harsher view. It's a thrillingly vibrant story about life for Protestants in Northern Ireland, as well as as a brilliant look at faith, religious passion, and madness.
The other thing that came from reading this book is that it revived my interest in visiting Ireland. One day, one day!
Trevor's stories are so intricate and carefully written that one pictures him using a jeweler's loupe as he writes. Almost every one of the stories--in fact, perhaps all of them--deal with some sort of loneliness. Whether it's widowhood, children who are separated by divorce, affairs, or strangers bumping into each other, the sense of sorrow and despair. There are numerous priests involved, and Protestants living in a Catholic country .There aren't a lot of happy people in these stories.
Occasionally I would read one of the stories and realize I didn't know what was going on, and would only pick up the thread half-way through. "Death of a Professor," about a professor who has his obituary erroneously printed in a newspaper, is one of the few stories with a droll sense of comedy, but I didn't figure it out until partially through it. I think many of his stories require a second read-through. Other stories hit the ground running. The best opening is from "A Friend in the Trade," about a business associate who has attached himself to a family: "They fell in love when A Whiter Shade of Pale played all summer. They married when Tony Orlando sang Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree. These times are faded memories now, hardly there at all, and they've forgotten Procol Harum and Suzi Quatro and Brotherhood of Man, having long ago turned to Brahms."
After finishing the book I flipped through it and jotted down 17 stories that I liked, not a bad batting average. I especially enjoyed "Child's Play," about two children who are forced together by marriage and form a fast friendship; "A Bit of Business," when a gang of burglars break into a house and tie up the elderly house sitter while he's watching the visit to Dublin by the Pope; "Three People," where a handyman invents an alibi to rescue a woman from a murder charge; "Good News," about a young girl who gets an acting job, but may have endured something very terrible on the set. Many of the stories have no resolution, not like we're used to. A terrific one called "Gilbert's Mother" details a woman who suspects her son of killing someone, but we never know if he did or not.
Others include "The Mourning," in which a young man is recruited into a bombing by the IRA; "Le Visiteur," a tale of a one-night stand among two people in France; "The Telephone Game," where a party takes a bad turn after a malicious prank; "An Evening Out," which may detail one of the worst blind dates in literature; "Big Bucks," which specifically deals with Irish emigration to America, and how it affects a relationship; and "The Dressmaker's Child," a wonderful tale about an auto mechanic who takes a Spanish couple to visit a statue of the Madonna, and on the way back may or may not have run over a young girl.
The masterpiece of this collection is the longest, called "Lost Ground." It is about a teenage boy, the presumed heir of his father's farm and a Protestant, who one day sees an apparition of a woman who calls herself St. Rosa. He tells his brother-in-law, a minister, who urges him to keep it a secret, but the boy feels the need to preach, and his family ends up locking him up. His older brother, a member of a Protestant militant group, takes an even harsher view. It's a thrillingly vibrant story about life for Protestants in Northern Ireland, as well as as a brilliant look at faith, religious passion, and madness.
The other thing that came from reading this book is that it revived my interest in visiting Ireland. One day, one day!
August 5, 2024
La primera vez que leo a este autor irlandés. Me pareció un gran cuentista. Algunos relatos me gustaron más que otros, pero vale la pena. Un libro que me parevió muy bueno.
El machismo, la vejez, la infidelidad, la pobreza en Irlanda, la inmigración, la soledad, las relaciones de pareja que no funcionan.... Trevor aborda estos temas con maestría. Más que recomendable.
El machismo, la vejez, la infidelidad, la pobreza en Irlanda, la inmigración, la soledad, las relaciones de pareja que no funcionan.... Trevor aborda estos temas con maestría. Más que recomendable.
March 24, 2020
The Lives We Live
Join Chekhov to James Joyce and you'd have William Trevor. A true master of the short story, Trevor inspects the lives of his characters with care and meditation to reveal, more often than not, the extraordinary where we least expect it.
Join Chekhov to James Joyce and you'd have William Trevor. A true master of the short story, Trevor inspects the lives of his characters with care and meditation to reveal, more often than not, the extraordinary where we least expect it.
June 10, 2011
This is an old Irish guy I had never heard of. Turns out he's written about a million books. I really like most of these short stories.
October 28, 2011
NY Times best book # 7. It's gonna be 2012 before I finish the ten best books of 2010. So glad I gave myself assigned pleasure reading while in grad school. I think I need an intervention.
July 17, 2016
Forty-eight wonderful stories of thought provoking human interest. The author uses beautiful language to convey what his characters are all about.
August 19, 2022
William Trevor's short stories are an exercise in making the quotidian beautiful. (This is a quietly stunning opener to one of the stories in this collection: "She put the wine in the sun, on the deep white window-sill, the bottle not yet opened. It cast a flush of red on the window-sill's surface beside the porcelain figure of a country girl with a sheaf of corn, the only ornament there. It felt like a celebration, the wine laid out to catch the last of the warmth on a Sunday evening, and Philippa wondered if her brother could possibly have forgotten what Sunday it was when he brought the bottle back from Findlater's on Friday.") He's a master of the form, although after 571 pages and 48 stories you start seeing some redundancy (e.g. the closing paragraph that always zooms out to make a sweeping statement about the human condition). As themes emerged, I realized I enjoyed his take on certain topics much more than others: faith - usually melancholy, dying out - these were sad but lovely; siblings - tragedy or loss - also sad yet lovely; adultery - usually the end of an affair - these were wistful and, yes, lovely; loner men - disturbing and borderline creepy - less and less of a fan as these cropped up.
June 14, 2022
4.25
Nicely written and conceived short stories that take place in Ireland or Europe on vacation. Quietly subtle.
The focus is on the emotions and thoughts of the characters, dealing with a problem that may or may not get solved.
I found this author in a reading list by Alice Munro.
Maybe I should buy this, so I don't have to worry about a return library date. At 550+ pages, I gobbled it down, and in retrospect, I should have slowly savored it.
Nicely written and conceived short stories that take place in Ireland or Europe on vacation. Quietly subtle.
The focus is on the emotions and thoughts of the characters, dealing with a problem that may or may not get solved.
I found this author in a reading list by Alice Munro.
Maybe I should buy this, so I don't have to worry about a return library date. At 550+ pages, I gobbled it down, and in retrospect, I should have slowly savored it.
June 2, 2024
A lovely - and large - set of short stories that bring you to different places and times within Ireland. As with all short story collections, some are amazing and some are "meh." I enjoyed learning about Irish culture, wildflowers, and stories. My favorite was a young man who became a priest, then a hermit, then returned to his aging parents. Another favorite was a woman who finally married the man of her dreams (who is blind) after his first wife's death.
March 3, 2015
Whenever I’m sitting around with other people who are passionate about their reading and writing, and the subject of the best living writers comes up, sooner or later someone mentions William Trevor. He shows up regularly in the “Best of” and O. Henry anthologies. He has written, it seems, hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels. In school, I bought his collected stories for a class and ended up reading all 1,000+ pages. So I knew that sooner or later Trevor would come back around, but I didn’t know that Selected Stories would reveal a writer even better than I remembered. Working at the height of his powers, Trevor seems to draw upon the benefits of a life well lived and a perception keenly honed, convincingly creating a wealth of diverse characters living quiet stories that could belong to any of us.
The worst of his stories are merely entertaining, while the best linger in memory and color my view of everything. Watching total strangers on the street, I sometimes hear Trevor’s voice narrating their inner monologues. (If reading Chekhov has been found to make people more empathetic, then researchers are bound to discover the same of Trevor.) The Washington Post already commended Trevor’s ability to inhabit “the skins of his lonely characters, mercilessly and compassionately revealing the moral and psychological complexities that lie beneath.” All of that is true, and it is particularly astonishing in light of the sheer variety of the psychologies he renders. Playing to this strength, Trevor shifts between two point of view characters in most of these stories, showing the same events or conflicts from opposing sensibilities with such clarity that readers cannot help but sympathize with both. There are no bad guys, not even when we follow two thieves breaking into houses who stumble upon an unexpected old man who isn't where he’s supposed to be. The boys are, in some sense, monsters; however, Trevor makes their crimes seem inevitable given their circumstances, and more importantly, he shows the doubts and regrets that build during and after those crimes. Other boys kill by accident, from simple curiosity, only later to discover how the killing has uniquely shaped each of their lives in the wake of destroying their friendship. The passage of long years is where most of these characters' psychologies emerge. Time is his greatest tool, along with the regrets it inevitably delivers.
Regret, in fact, is one of Trevor’s favorite themes. So is sacrifice. A Church of Ireland priest suffers decades after his fiancé left him, living loyally with his sister who drove her away; a young mechanic sideswipes a neglected child and, over the years, understands how his guilt will bring him to the doorstep of the child’s mother, who insists correctly that he now belongs to her; in the wake an abusive husband’s death, the wife sits with those seeking to comfort her and admits she is glad he is dead, glad he can no longer dominate her. These people made a decision or a mistake, long ago, that turned out to define them, if only to themselves. Everything since has amounted to quietly enduring the consequences, learning to live with the shame, coming to accept what they gained through the sacrifice. Suffering teaches. A woman left in Ireland while her fiancé goes to America comes to realize, as she agonizes over the separation and snatches moments on the phone with him whenever she can, that the love she pledged to him was actually a love of the future, of the possible adventures to come from immigration, and so realizes she will never join him nor marry him. Trevor knows better than anyone that time goes only one direction and mistakes belong to the unrecoverable past.
His technique, visible in nearly all his stories, is to reveal the facts about these lives little by little, as the story unfolds, in just the right order and at just the right moments. Readers thereby get to know his characters the same way we come to know people, meeting them in the middle of their story; through conversation, we watch them act and react, we listen to what they say and how they say it. They become a personality. Trevor’s depictions of their thoughts read like an extension of these behaviors, but also an intimate depiction of their private anxieties and preoccupations. In other words, Trevor makes mind readers of us all.
For him, emotions are landscapes to explore via particular experience. They are never abstract, never disembodied. Though these landscapes are often traveled, each story moves across them by its own route, giving each experience its own texture. The human heart is no less mysterious for Trevor's guidance, but in his hands its tendencies and possibilities feel more recognizable from both outside and in. In his world, conscience makes not cowards of us all, but mourners who ponder the impetuous mistakes of our misspent years. In the meantime we learn to ask each other how and when absolution might come, finding comfort where we can. Trevor's wisdom, the most important thread running throughout all his work, lifts every story in its final paragraph to dignity, often to grace, finding resolution not in the way events turn out but the way we manage to understand them. Acceptance is what matters. Interpretation is our path home, out of landscapes of grief or regret. Hard truths, in the end, prove our finest guides.
The worst of his stories are merely entertaining, while the best linger in memory and color my view of everything. Watching total strangers on the street, I sometimes hear Trevor’s voice narrating their inner monologues. (If reading Chekhov has been found to make people more empathetic, then researchers are bound to discover the same of Trevor.) The Washington Post already commended Trevor’s ability to inhabit “the skins of his lonely characters, mercilessly and compassionately revealing the moral and psychological complexities that lie beneath.” All of that is true, and it is particularly astonishing in light of the sheer variety of the psychologies he renders. Playing to this strength, Trevor shifts between two point of view characters in most of these stories, showing the same events or conflicts from opposing sensibilities with such clarity that readers cannot help but sympathize with both. There are no bad guys, not even when we follow two thieves breaking into houses who stumble upon an unexpected old man who isn't where he’s supposed to be. The boys are, in some sense, monsters; however, Trevor makes their crimes seem inevitable given their circumstances, and more importantly, he shows the doubts and regrets that build during and after those crimes. Other boys kill by accident, from simple curiosity, only later to discover how the killing has uniquely shaped each of their lives in the wake of destroying their friendship. The passage of long years is where most of these characters' psychologies emerge. Time is his greatest tool, along with the regrets it inevitably delivers.
Regret, in fact, is one of Trevor’s favorite themes. So is sacrifice. A Church of Ireland priest suffers decades after his fiancé left him, living loyally with his sister who drove her away; a young mechanic sideswipes a neglected child and, over the years, understands how his guilt will bring him to the doorstep of the child’s mother, who insists correctly that he now belongs to her; in the wake an abusive husband’s death, the wife sits with those seeking to comfort her and admits she is glad he is dead, glad he can no longer dominate her. These people made a decision or a mistake, long ago, that turned out to define them, if only to themselves. Everything since has amounted to quietly enduring the consequences, learning to live with the shame, coming to accept what they gained through the sacrifice. Suffering teaches. A woman left in Ireland while her fiancé goes to America comes to realize, as she agonizes over the separation and snatches moments on the phone with him whenever she can, that the love she pledged to him was actually a love of the future, of the possible adventures to come from immigration, and so realizes she will never join him nor marry him. Trevor knows better than anyone that time goes only one direction and mistakes belong to the unrecoverable past.
His technique, visible in nearly all his stories, is to reveal the facts about these lives little by little, as the story unfolds, in just the right order and at just the right moments. Readers thereby get to know his characters the same way we come to know people, meeting them in the middle of their story; through conversation, we watch them act and react, we listen to what they say and how they say it. They become a personality. Trevor’s depictions of their thoughts read like an extension of these behaviors, but also an intimate depiction of their private anxieties and preoccupations. In other words, Trevor makes mind readers of us all.
For him, emotions are landscapes to explore via particular experience. They are never abstract, never disembodied. Though these landscapes are often traveled, each story moves across them by its own route, giving each experience its own texture. The human heart is no less mysterious for Trevor's guidance, but in his hands its tendencies and possibilities feel more recognizable from both outside and in. In his world, conscience makes not cowards of us all, but mourners who ponder the impetuous mistakes of our misspent years. In the meantime we learn to ask each other how and when absolution might come, finding comfort where we can. Trevor's wisdom, the most important thread running throughout all his work, lifts every story in its final paragraph to dignity, often to grace, finding resolution not in the way events turn out but the way we manage to understand them. Acceptance is what matters. Interpretation is our path home, out of landscapes of grief or regret. Hard truths, in the end, prove our finest guides.
June 27, 2019
William Trevor's talent is astounding. It is so good as to be nearly transparent; we don't see the writing, we see the characters and setting as if we are looking on on real lives. And all characters are new and different, giving me the impression that, given enough time, Trevor could have written a story about each of us.
June 7, 2020
What a treat. Some stories that I had already read felt like being read for the first time. A master of undertones, understatements and understanding. This is probably one of the best possible entry points to his work, so if you haven't had this joy, go for it.
September 28, 2017
Excels at characters
January 13, 2018
I respect the writer’s talent, but this is too much of a good thing. It was a library checkout, so pressure was to finish. This is better a bookshelf book, read in small doses, IMO.
January 28, 2018
I gave this three stars, because Trevor is a master of the craft of writing. I withheld the other two stars because how many stories about sad Irish folk do you really need?
April 22, 2018
It was like falling in love for the first time. Beautiful stories. Thank you!
September 16, 2018
***4.5 stars***
August 1, 2020
My first short story author was Frank O’Connor. Then I discovered William Trevor and have been reading him every since.
Read
September 23, 2020Only read (listened to) "A Day"
October 5, 2021
A true student of the human heart
March 20, 2017
It took me a long time to get through this collection, because each short story is a novel in its emotional and imaginative depth. Sublime.
June 23, 2020
The stories are beautiful and nice.
June 22, 2021
I liked some but others put me to sleep.
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