Product Description

A collection of William Trevor's short stories, featuring all the stories from five previous collections together with "Beyond the Pale" and "The News from Ireland", plus four stories not previously published in book form.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #426321 in Books
• Published on: 1993-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1280 pages

Customer Reviews

My desert island book
This is my favourite book ever, a collection from the pen of a complete master. Trevor is unmatched, in Europe at least, for his skill at drafting short stories of insight, depth, humour and drama. Not always enamoured with the human race, the odd overly-gloomy story can be overlooked in favour of the scores of powerful and brilliant ones. Perhaps the only complaint is that the book is just too big, making his great acheivements seem less rare than they are.

Sublime stuff
This is a truly wonderful book: dozens of short stories of consistently high quality by one of the really great figures in literature. Trevor uses words with great precision and economy to depict a whole world and portray a complex and ambivalent character within paragraphs. His two special tricks are the use of incredibly flat, deadpan prose to tell us about something really horrible or astonishingy bizarre; and the use of incredibly funny, almost surreal dialogue.

The earlier stories are sometimes blackly humorous and macabre. The latter ones have an autumnal and elegaic feel. It is hard to know which type to prefer, or to pick a favourite. A personal top six would be "Memories of Youghal", "An Evening with John Joe Dempsey", "Mrs Silly", "Bodily Secrets", "Two More Gallants" and "Coffee with Oliver". But another half dozen would do just as well. One feels there is a trick, to have produced so much with such excellence. But there is no trick: just constant excellence.

Sublime stuff
This is a truly wonderful book: dozens of short stories of consistently high quality by one of the really great figures in literature. Trevor uses words with great precision and economy to depict a whole world and portray a complex and ambivalent character within paragraphs. His two special tricks are the use of incredibly flat, deadpan prose to tell us about something really horrible or astonishingy bizarre; and the use of incredibly funny, almost surreal dialogue.

The earlier stories are sometimes blackly humorous and macabre. The latter ones have an autumnal and elegaic feel. It is hard to know which type to prefer, or to pick a favourite. A personal top six would be "Memories of Youghal", "An Evening with John Joe Dempsey", "Mrs Silly", "Bodily Secrets", "Two More Gallants" and "Coffee with Oliver". But another half dozen would do just as well. One feels there is a trick, to have produced so much with such excellence. But there is no trick: just constant excellence.