An incredibly beautiful and generous novel. I loved the various ways he lets us inhabit each character and manages in subtle and non-flashy (but still impressive and often puzzling) ways to convey not just what a character thinks and feels, but also something of the mystery and life of each one. It's deliberate and thoughtful, also sad and unpredictable (for me anyway), and the quality of writing is masterful. Amazing work--I would read this again.

Here are some of the passages I highlighted:

He loved her, more than he could ever have loved anyone, but today, as so often before, she made on her own the effort he could not help her with.

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Because love nourished instinct, and instinct’s short cuts and economies, too much had been too carelessly left.

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In novels people ran away. And novels were a reflection of reality, of all the world’s desperation and of its happiness, as much of one as of the other. Why should mistakes and foolishness – in reality too – not be put right while still they might be?

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The confusions of an afternoon, so strangely happening, calmed in retrospect, and yet for Lucy the afternoon had not dulled to greyness but had kept its colours as fresh as in a painting. Images of reality and of illusion still were there.

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Circumstances had shaped an emptiness in her existence; and love’s ungainly passion belonged, with so much else, to the undemanding past.

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Their people would end when they did, all duty to them finished, all memory of them dead. Only the myths would linger, the stories that were told.

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He had smiled through this acceptance of nature’s strict economy and she had too, keeping company with him in his dismissal of morbid anticipation, remembering him as he had been while she made the slow journey of loving him again, forgiven for her unspoken reproaches.

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She was as used to being different as she was to feeling alone. The same thing perhaps it was, and anyway it was ridiculous to mind.

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Her tranquillity is their astonishment. For that they come, to be amazed again that such peace is there: all they have heard, and still hear now, does not record it. Calamity shaped a life when, long ago, chance was so cruel. Calamity shapes the story that is told, and is the reason for its being: is what they know, besides, the gentle fruit of such misfortune’s harvest? They like to think so: she has sensed it that they do.

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The rooks come down to scrabble in the grass as every evening at this time they do, her companions while she watches the fading of the day.

The story of Lucy Gault starts when Lucy is eight, almost nine in 1921, when her father shoots through the shoulder a possible member of the IRA who has come to burn the 'big house' that the Gault family have lived in for generations. These actions - the possible burning, and the shooting - start a chain of events that change the Gault's lives, and the man who is shot, for ever.

The book is suffused with a feeling of melancholy (in fact like all of Trevor's books that I've read) as well as a kind of dreamy detachment. This time I tried to work out how he achieves it, and I think it has a lot to do with how Trevor uses passive construction of sentences: "The two men on the promenade were watched from far away" for example, and also with a sense of longing, and of time inevitably passing. Anyway, however he does it, it is wonderful.

There are sections in the novel where I was desperate for resolution; willing for things to happen, which of course, when they did were not exactly as I hoped. Near the end there is a passing reference to an old bicycle, and for those that have read The Story of Lucy Gault

Spoiler

did you read this as meaning that Lucy and Ralph do once again meet briefly? I'd be really interested to know what you thought. <\spoiler>

I'm already sad that one day soon, since Trevor died last year, I will have read all of his work.

www.clairefuller.co.uk

A beautiful, sad little bookwith a mood akin to that of Ethan Frome, with characters caught in a Limbo between bitterness and honour.
I wanted to keep reading, and I read in hope and trepidation, sensing that Trevor is not one to offer simplistic solutions. There is no attempt here to preach, or to explain, only to explore and to commiserate by writing solid and affectionate, but never patronising, portraits.

A good read.. No spoilers, But I like reading about Ireland.

Wow.
I've gotta say, I probably would have put this down if it wasn't mentioned as a "must read before you die," but boy am I happy I got through the first 30 pages, because the second time I picked up the book I couldn't put it down until I only had 30 pages LEFT.
This was a wonderful wonderful book. I really think it is "classic" worthy. It made me feel in a similar fashion to Ethan Frome: I couldn't stop thinking about the characters and how they must feel and the guilt and sadness and loneliness.. and I felt emotionally invested in the narrative of each particular character (even those that rivaled each other!).
I definitely suggest this book.

The story of a life half-lived and avoidable consequences of misunderstandings. The narration is at arms' length which is appropriate for the subject matter but meant that you really couldn't gain an understanding or form empathy for any of the characters.
Disappointing, but I did keep reading, which I don't if I really hate a book.

So lovely and so sad. Trevor tells an amazing story with beautiful prose and evocative details. I will never forget this book.