I doubted a lot before doing this review. Usually, I like reviewing only books that I can recommend without any doubt. Maybe not perfect ones themselves, but interesting enough in some senses to deserve a review. This book made me think a lot before deciding, but I believe that after all can be good reading for a lot of different readers.
Twelve short stories which develop in Ireland, Italy, and other places. The truth is that is a book about failed, unhappy or lost in memories relationships. All the stories are well written. The characters are well presented, and their stories as well. I don’t have any doubt about the author knowledge of human nature, but not even one of the stories has an optimistic or happy ending. It is a continuous fight to survive, to save the relationship or the contact with the family or with friends. Everyone feels lonely and deserted.
The conclusion is that this book needs to be faced completely prepared to read about real life and its delusions without any sweetener.
This are the titles included in this book:
The News from Ireland
On the Zattere
Lunch in Winter
The property of Colette Nervi
Running Away
Cocktails at Doney’s
Bodily Secrets
Virgins
Her Mother’s Daughter
Music
Two more Gallants
The Wedding in the Garden
Novelist and short-story writ
er William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in the Republic of Ireland on 22 May 1928.
He was educated at St Columba’s College, County Dublin, and Trinity College, Dublin. He worked briefly as a teacher, and later as a copywriter in an advertising agency before he began to work full-time as a writer in 1965. He was also a sculptor and exhibited frequently in Dublin and London. His first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, was published in 1958.His fiction, set mainly in Ireland and England, ranges from black comedies characterised by eccentrics and sexual deviants to stories exploring Irish history and politics, and he articulates the tensions between Irish Protestant landowners and Catholic tenants in what critics have termed the ‘big house’ novel. He is the acclaimed author of several collections of short stories, and has adapted a number of his own stories for the stage, television and radio. These collections include The Day We Got Drunk on Cake and Other Stories (1967), The Ballroom of Romance and Other Stories (1972),Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories (1975) and Beyond the Pale (1981). His early novels include The Old Boys (1964), winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel (1969). The Children of Dynmouth (1976) and Fools of Fortune (1983) both won the Whitbread Novel Award, and Felicia’s Journey(1994), the story of a young Irish girl who becomes the victim of a sexual sociopath, won both the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Sunday Express Book of the Year awards. The Hill Bachelors (2000), a collection of short stories, won both the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Short Stories and the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction in 2001. The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. William Trevor’s latest short story collections are: A Bit On the Side (2004), on the theme of adultery; The Dressmaker’s Child (2005); and Cheating at Canasta (2007). His most recent novel isLove and Summer (2009). Also in 2009, his Collected Stories was published.
William Trevor was awarded an honorary CBE in 1977 for his services to literature, and was made a Companion of Literature in 1994. He was knighted in 2002. He is also a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and was awarded the David Cohen British Literature Prize by the Arts Council of England in 1999 in recognition of his work. He lives in Devon, and was awarded the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award in Irish Literature in 2008.
The hand of good fortune 