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The waiter who divulges his shocking life of crime to his ex-wife.
A woman repeats the story of her parents' unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy.
The schoolgirl who regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her.
A middle-aged couple meet in a theatre bar for a squalid blind date.
The disappointed priest who fears an innocent young girl may run away from home.
Two self-certain sisters visit a newly widowed local woman.
And, in the volume's title story, a middle-age accountant offers his reasons for ending a love affair.
From these slender moments Trevor creates whole lives, conjuring up characters marked by bitterness and loss. William Trevor's graceful prose is a wonder in itself, and as convincing when inhabiting the mind of a school lunchmaid, an adulterous Irish country librarian or a murderer on the London streets. And as is always the case with William Trevor, venom and tragedy are never far from the still surface of the stories.
At the heart of this stunning collection is Trevor's characteristic tenderness and unflinching eye for both the humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and rural life.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 15, 2004 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781400121434
- File size: 172439 KB
- Duration: 05:59:14
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Simon Vance and Josephine Bailey take turns reading these 12 stories by one of the greatest contemporary practitioners of the genre. Both narrators do an excellent job. The stories are of love--alive and worn-out--tragedy--past and present--and of making a life out of whatever is available. Trevor's characters are the flawed real people that we are, and we believe in them. When reading Trevor's work, pacing is paramount, as the stories are subtle and inevitably surprise. Vance and Bailey rise to the occasion. Some of these readings are near-perfect; all are respectable. Listeners will not be dis-appointed. R.E.K. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from August 16, 2004
The protagonists of this haunting, emotionally bleak collection of stories—a new widow confessing to two surprised Legion of Mary sisters the secrets of her marriage to a hateful man in "Sitting with the Dead"; a woman stalked by her lonely, possibly violent ex-husband in "On the Streets"; an heiress who compulsively recounts her tragic life story to total strangers in "Solitude"; and a couple who exploit each other on a blind date in "An Evening Out"—are generally 50-ish, usually childless and almost always burdened by regret over relationships decayed or forgone. They live in the aftermath of irremediable mistakes, ruefully cognizant that hope and romance are often delusory covers for self-interest and survival. Even the young—an 18-year-old girl who weeps with regret over future betrayals, an Irish woman who calls off her wedding after realizing she loves the dream of America more than her intended—are melancholy and introspective. Trevor reveals his native Ireland as a world sandwiched between modernity and its accompanying wealth, secularism and vulgarity, and a past that was more soulful and pious but also more restrictive. The much-lauded Trevor (Felicia's Journey
; The Story of Lucy Gault
; etc.) explores the many sources and shadings of regret with his usual delicate but brilliant psychological nuance, brightened occasionally by nostalgia for the lost love that once impelled his characters forward. Agent, Peter Matson at Sterling Lord Literistic
.
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