Selected Stories
William Trevor
Language: English
Pages: 576
ISBN: 0143115960
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Selected as one of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year.
Four-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, three-time winner of the Whitbread Award, and five-time nominee for the Booker Prize, William Trevor is one of the most acclaimed authors of our era. Over a career spanning more than half a century, Trevor has crafted exquisitely rendered tales that brilliantly illuminate the human condition. A powerful collection by "the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language" (The New Yorker), Selected Stories brings together forty-eight stories from After Rain, The Hill Bachelors, A Bit on the Side, and Cheating at Canasta.
waiter interrupted her efforts to place the couple, arriving with the escalope she’d ordered. ‘Bon appétit, madame.’ ‘Thank you.’ She liked the restaurant, the thirties’ style, the pale blue lighting, the white grand piano, the aproned waiters. She liked her escalope when she tasted it, and the heavily buttered spinach, the little out-of-season new potatoes. She liked the wine. ‘Not bad, this place,’ her companion said. ‘What d’you think?’ ‘It’s lovely.’ They talked more easily than they had
to people, the small room at the back of the bungalow that she’d painted a bright buttercup shade, the door and window-sills in white gloss. ‘It’s still the same,’ she said. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’ She’d made the curtains herself, blue that matched the carpet, dolls playing ring-a-roses on them. They’d never bought furniture for the little room. Tempting Providence it would be, he said. ‘There’d be no deception,’ Nuala said. ‘No lie, nothing like that. Only the money side kept out of
damped the fire down in the stove. Outside, she fed her hens. In Corry’s workshop she remained longer than she usually did on her morning visit to the saints who had become her friends: St Laurence with his gridiron, St Gabriel the messenger, St Clare of Assisi, St Thomas the Apostle and blind St Lucy, St Catherine, St Agnes. Corry had made them live for her and she felt the first faint slipping away of her anger as they returned her gaze with undisturbed tranquillity. Touched by it, lost in its
look supremely healthy.’ He smiles. His teeth are still his own. ‘If I may say so.’ ‘I’m not so sure that I like islands in the sun. But even so I wanted to go there.’ ‘For the therapies?’ ‘No, I would have avoided that. Sand therapy, water therapy, sex therapy, image therapy, holistic counselling. I would have steered clear, I think.’ ‘Being on your own’s a therapy too, of course. Although it’s nice to have a chat.’ She doesn’t listen; he goes on talking. On the island of Skyros tourists
arrangement he hoped for with the potato dealer; the moment he had mentioned Mulreavy’s name he’d been aware of a profit to be made. Recognizing at first, as she had herself, only shame and folly in the fact that his niece was pregnant, he had none the less explored the situation meticulously: that was his way. She had long been aware of her brother’s hope that one day Ellie would marry some suitable young fellow who would join them in the farmhouse and could be put to work, easing the burden in