Tag Archives: William Trevor

#BookReview ‘Last Stories’ by William Trevor #shortstories

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The books of William Trevor have delighted me over many years, his novels and short stories are all excellent. Last Stories is the last of his short stories, published in 2018, two years after his death. They are masterful. His a such an observer of human nature, sensitive to emotion, the fickleness and unpredictability of human nature, and the longevity of longing. William TrevorTen stories. Each touching. Trevor focusses on the solitary people, quiet, often overlooked but each with emotional turmoil beneath the surface. Trevor digs deep to reveal the things unseen. The stories are simple, mostly involve two people, and revolve around love, loss and guilt. Most are poignant.
In ‘The Women,’ two women stand at the side of the hockey pitch and watch the schoolgirls play. They concentrate on one girl in particular. Cecilia, sent away to school by her widowed father who wants to her grow up as a girl surrounded by girls, is aware of the attention but puzzled by it.
‘Giotto’s Angels’ tells the story of two lost, lonely people, whose lives converge by accident. A man with poor memory stops people on the street, asking if St Ardo’s church is nearby. No one can help him, except a woman standing in a doorway who misreads his signals and assumes he wants female company. The two walk together, each consumed by their own understanding of the situation, completely wrong in their assumptions.
In ‘The Unknown Woman,’ a priest visits the home of Harriet Balfour to tell her Emily Vance has died in a street accident. He found Harriet’s name on a list of Emily’s cleaning clients. He can find no one who knows her but Harriet can tell him nothing of Emily’s life. Trevor explores the gap remaining when someone dies, especially the death of someone private, whose life touches only lightly they people met.
If you enjoy reading Elizabeth Strout, Mary Lawson, Anita Shreve and similar writers, please try William Trevor. His writing is concise, beautiful but also sharply observed.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

For a taster of William Trevor’s novels, click the titles below to read the opening paragraphs of:-
DEATH IN SUMMER
TWO LIVES: READING TURGENEV & MY HOUSE IN UMBRIA

If you like this, try:-
‘All the Rage’ by AL Kennedy
‘Separated from the Sea’ by Amanda Huggins
‘The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth’ by William Boyd

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LAST STORIES by William Trevor #bookreview https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-6s0 via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Jane Smiley

Great Opening Paragraph 111… ‘Reading Turgenev’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“A woman, not yet fifty-seven, slight and seeming frail, eats carefully at a table in a corner. Her slices of buttered bread have been halved for her, her fried egg mashed, her bacon cut. ‘Well, this is happiness!’ she murmurs aloud, but none of the other women in the dining room replies because none of them is near enough to hear. She’s privileged, the others say, being permitted to occupy on her own the bare-topped table in the corner. She has her own salt and pepper.”
William TrevorFrom ‘Reading Turgenev’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
DEATH IN SUMMER

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan
‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen
‘Dance Dance Dance’ by Haruki Murakami

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara READING TURGENEV by William Trevor http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2qN via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 93… ‘Death in Summer’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“After the funeral the hiatus that tragedy brought takes a different form. The suddenness of the death has gone, irrelevant now. Thaddeus has stood and knelt in the church of St Nicholas, has heard his wife called good, the word he himself gave to a clergyman he has known all his life. People were present in the church who were strangers to him, who afterwards, in the house, introduced themselves as a few of Letitia’s friends from the time before he knew her. ‘And where is Letitia now?’ an undertaker a week ago inquired, confusing Thaddeus, who for a moment wondered if the man knew why he had been summoned. ‘It’s Letitia who has died,’ he said, and answered, when the man explained, that Letitia was in the mortuary, where she’d been taken.”
William TrevorFrom ‘Death in Summer’ by William Trevor

Here’s another #FirstPara by William Trevor:-
READING TURGENEV

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers 
‘Astonishing Splashes of Colour’ by Clare Morrall 
‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara DEATH IN SUMMER by William Trevor via http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vz @SandraDanby