Review
Instead she stayed, a different person too,
belonging where the thing had happened.
The last line of Bravado from William
Trevor's latest collection could stand in as a
fitting last line to any one of his stories. Dealing
in his trademark traffic of the human heart rent by
another or marked by a tragic event, Trevor shapes
characters that belong to their stories. They
live lives shaped entirely by an event or another
person, their fates slowly guided down a path they
will continue to walk. Resignation and helplessness
– states common to all of these characters – read as
distantly melancholic, the high emotional stakes
girded by Trevor's sure-footed, measured pacing. In
Bravado,...
Beyond the Book
William Trevor was born
on May 24, 1928, in Mitchelstown,
County Cork, in the Republic of
Ireland. He grew up in various
provincial towns and attended a
number of schools, graduating
from Trinity College, in Dublin,
with a degree in history. He
first exercised his artistry as
a sculptor, working as a teacher
in Northern Ireland and then
emigrated to England in search
of work when the school went
bankrupt. He could have returned
to Ireland once he became a
successful writer, he said, "but
by then I had become a wanderer,
and one way and...
