Scan barcode
A review by oliverho
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
5.0
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.
---
Because love nourished instinct, and instinct’s short cuts and economies, too much had been too carelessly left.
---
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?
---
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.
---
Circumstances had shaped an emptiness in her existence; and love’s ungainly passion belonged, with so much else, to the undemanding past.
---
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.
---
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.
---
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.
---
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.
---
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.
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.
---
Because love nourished instinct, and instinct’s short cuts and economies, too much had been too carelessly left.
---
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?
---
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.
---
Circumstances had shaped an emptiness in her existence; and love’s ungainly passion belonged, with so much else, to the undemanding past.
---
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.
---
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.
---
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.
---
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.
---
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.