Product Description

William Trevor's new collection of stories is his first since the highly acclaimed AFTER RAIN. It contains a dozen new stories, mostly set in Ireland, that show Trevor at the height of his powers. With understatement and precision he writes about the lonely and the sad, about those that barely have control over their lives and those who have something to hide. In 'Three People' a father waits for the proposal for his daughter that will never come; in 'Against the Odds', a con-woman has businessthat takes her all across the Six Counties; and in the poignant title-story, a youngest son returns home for his father's funeral and stays to run the farm.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31941 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
William Trevor has established a trademark for beautifully crafted human sketches which depict powerful situations and sentiments with an extraordinary economy of detail and expression. The Hill Bachelors offers 12 such sketches, revealing a master at the very height of his powers. The merest tips of emotional icebergs break the placid surface of his prose. Yet, through gesture, half-formed thought or barely-articulated wish, he indicates the memories, traumas and desires that lie beneath, ennobling the ordinary with an often tragic grandeur. His theme is often "what might have been".

The unrequited love of "A Friend in the Trade", the rejection of heroism in "The Mourning" or the renunciation of personal fulfilment, for familial or even national interests in "The Hill Bachelors" combine to establish pathos as the key tone of the collection. In the title story, 29-year-old Paulie returns to work the land of his fathers on a desolate hillside to the west of Ireland, full-knowing that this means he will never marry: "Enduring, unchanging, the hills had waited for him, claiming one of their own." Many of the stories are set in Ireland, and these have a richness of imagery and lyrical intensity that at times brings them close to prose poems. "Low Sunday, 1950," recalls Yeats' "terrible beauty" in its imagery of a landscape haunted by history; while "The Virgin's Gift" combines descriptive simplicity with religious allegory in a moving tale of a man's return to his parents after 40 years of self-imposed exile. --Robert Mighall

About the Author
William Trevor was born in County Cork in 1928 and spent his childhood in various provincial Irish towns. He went to Trinity College, Dublin and then to England in 1953. He now lives in Devon. In 1977 William Trevor received an honorary CBE in recognition of his services to literature, and in 1998 he was awarded the prestigious David Cohen British Literature Prize for a lifetime's achievement in writing.

Customer Reviews

ELEGANT PROSE - KEEN UNDERSTANDING
Following on the heels of his memorable Death In Summer (1998), the incomparable Irish storyteller, William Trevor, brings us a collection of 12 poignant tales that illuminate the human condition.

Acknowledged by many to be the master of his oeuvre, Trevor commands our attention with dignity and subtlety. Amazingly adept at shifting perspectives from male to female in varying locations and scenes, the author's championship form is again evident in The Hill Bachelors.

His initial offering, "Three People" is an incisive rendering of the toll of fabrication. A trio share a secret too dark for utterance which binds them together yet holds love at bay.

A lonely minister's life is compassionately observed in "Of The Cloth." The Rev. Grattan Fitzmaurice oversees three small churches, "...one of them now unattended, each of them remote, as his rectory was, as his life was." He lives alone in the rectory where "Emptily, all sound came twice because an echo added a pretence of more activity than there was, as if in mercy offering companionship."

Bea, a nine-year-old with long dark hair, in "Good News" hopes that a movie part will heal the rupture in her family, while Clione in "A Friend in the Trade" is a middle-aged woman with whom "Beauty has not finished." She knows what is unspoken and feels only pity for an unrequited love.

Trevor's spare prose shimmers in the summary paragraph of "The Virgin's Gift," as he describes a son's return to his now frail, elderly parents: "No choirs sang, there was no sudden splendour, only limbs racked by toil in a smoky hovel, a hand that blindly searched the air. Yet angels surely held the cobweb of this mercy, the gift of a son given again."

Another story takes place on the eve of a wedding when a game forces a young couple to confront the differences in one another. With "Against The Odds," Trevor displays his gift for knowing the female heart as an older woman rues her past while fearing she has jeopardized a chance for happiness.

Both eloquent and elegant, Trevor's work is meat compared to the broth of some of today's fiction. He continues to astound as he explores the complexities of human relationships with sympathetic candor. The Hill Bachelors is yet another triumph for the most accomplished storyteller of our day.

Small perfections
As a short story writer William Trevor displays a complete mastery of form, character, language and setting. These elements are moved around in the manner of a skillful scene-shifter with sometimes one element, sometimes another, coming to the fore. It is the Irish setting in the title story and The Virgin's Gift. Sometimes it's character as in Three People. He can also do unlikely romance, as in the beautiful Against The Odds. Trevor creates perfect miniatures, full of light and detail and meaning.

Understand a little more, condemn a little less
These economical stories are often as much about what isn't said as about what happens or is spoken between the protagonists. Whether he is writing about simple country folk (simple in the old sense, that is), or metropolitan elites, he imputes a depth of feeling and sensitivity that seems to effortlessly chime in with people's views of themselves and each other. It is a quality of deep respect for humanity and as such it endows his writing with a deep sense of meaning. You won't catch William Trevor relying on stereotypes for even the smallest of walk-on parts in his dramas of the modern soul.
I say modern, for his stories here are as likely to be set in London, Wales or France, as the backwaters of neglected corners of Ireland which is his usual geographical milieu. They depict what is essential and eternal about good people and they often convey unease about people who may not be so good, while viewing their frailties or transgressions with an understanding eye. He exemplifies the opposite of what John Major so cynically advised, as his writing allows us to understand a little more and condemn a little less.