The Collected Stories

by William Trevor

Overview

A collection of short stories from celebrated author William Trevor in which he shines a light on the day-to-day life of Ireland and its citizens. 

From his debut collection, “The Day We Got Drunk on Cake,” published in 1968, to “Family Sins” (1990), William Trevor has crafted the short story to perfection, giving us brilliant and subtle stories full of the reversals, surprises, and shadowy truths we discover in life itself. To read this volume is not just to encounter an extraordinary literary stylist, but to understand life as surely as though we were looking through the eyes of his protagonists and—deeper still—into their hearts.

William Trevor: The Collected Stories includes the tales from his seven previous books, as well as four stories that have never appeared in book form in America. They depict the comforts and frustrations of life in rural Ireland, the complexities of family relationships, and the elusive grace of love. They portray the almost invisible strands that bind people to each other as well as the chains that imprison them in solitary yearning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101667231
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/01/1993
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1280
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He is the author of twenty-nine books, including Felicia’s Journey, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and was made into a motion picture, and The Story of Lucy Gault, which was shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and the Whitbread Fiction Prize. In 1996 he was the recipient of the Lannan Award for Fiction. In 2001, he won the Irish Times Literature Prize for fiction. Two of his books were chosen by The New York Times as best books of the year, and his short stories appeared regularly in The New Yorker. In 1997, he was named Honorary Commander of the British Empire.

Hometown:

Devon, England

Date of Birth:

May 24, 1928

Place of Birth:

Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland

Education:

Trinity College, Dublin, 1950

Table of Contents

The Collected Stories A Meeting in Middle Age
Access to the Children
The General's Day
Memories of Youghal
The Table
A School Story
The Penthouse Apartment
In at the Birth
The Introspections of J. P. Powers
The Day We Got Drunk on Cake
Miss Smith
The Hotel of the Idle Moon
Nice Day at School
The Original Sins of Edward Tripp
The Forty-seventh Saturday
The Ballroom of Romance
A Happy Family
The Grass Widows
The Mark-2 Wife
An Evening with John Joe Dempsey
Kinkies
Going Home
A Choice of Butchers
O Fat White Woman
Raymond Bamber and Mrs. Fitch
The Distant Past
In Isfahan
Angels at the Ritz
The Death of Peggy Meehan
Mrs. Silly
A Complicated Nature
Teresa's Wedding
Office Romances
Mr. McNamara
Afternoon Dancing
Last Wishes
Mrs. Acland's Ghosts
Another Christmas
Broken Homes
Matilda's England: 1. The Tennis Court; 2. The Summer-house; 3. The Drawing-room
Torridge
Death in Jerusalem
Lovers of Their Time
The Raising of Elvira Tremlett
Flights of Fancy
Attracta
A Dream of Butterflies
The Bedroom Eyes of Mrs. Vansittart
Downstairs at Fitzgerald's
Mulvihill's Memorial
Beyond the Pale
The Blue Dress
The Teddy-bears' Picnic
The Time of Year
Being Stolen From
Mr Tennyson
Autumn Sunshine
Sunday Drinks
The Paradise Lounge
Mags
The News from Ireland
On the Zattere
The Wedding in the Garden
Lunch in Winter
The Property of Colette Nervi
Running Away
Cocktails at Doney's
Her Mother's Daughter
Bodily Secrets
Two More Gallants
The Smoke Trees of San Pietro
Virgins
Music
Events at Drimaghleen
Family Sins
A Trinity
The Third Party
Honeymoon in Tramore
The Printmaker
In Love with Ariadne
A Husband's Return
Coffee with Oliver
August Saturday
Children of the Headmaster
Kathleen's Field
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

Work of impeccable strength and piercing profundity. —The New York Times Book Review

Reynolds Price

Trevor is probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language.

New Yorker

That Irishman William Trevor is one of the finest and most highly regarded contemporary short story writers is affirmed by the publication of The Collected Stories, which gathers all the short fiction from his seven previous collections as well as four stories that have never previously appeared in book form. Trevor has come to be known for his limpid style and for adeptly dissecting the psychology of the eccentric character; these traits are demonstrated time and time again in this magnificent collection, but probably not in any keener circumstance than in one of the four stories first appearing here in book form, "The Smoke Trees of San Pietro." It's set in Italy, and it concerns a boy's growing perception of the truth about his mother's relationship with a man who's not her husband. It's an exquisite but not precious realization of people's need to love, rendered in breathtaking scenes and lovely sentences. Every fiction collection in every public library large or small should add Trevor's Collected Stories.

Brad Hooper

Because his prose is as plain and natural as daylight, his tremendous achievement seems effortless....There is always the rising hint of faint laughter here (1993).

New York Times Books of the Century

Extraordinary . . . Mr. Trevor’s sheer intensity of entry into the lives of his people . . . proceeds to uncover new layers of yearning and pain, new angles of vision and credible thought.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“One of the finest writers now at work in our language . . . No writer practicing the form today moves with nimbler assurances than Trevor across such an impressive gamut of social types and emotional connections.”
—The Boston Globe

“The indisputable master of twentieth-century fiction . . . Trevor’s carefully chiseled, lyrical prose—at once ironic and elegiac—is addictive, his insights acutely compassionate. The tales are haunting and profound.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A textbook for anyone who ever wanted to write a story, and a treasure for anyone who loves to read them.”
—Madision Smartt Bell, USA Today

“The range of characters that Trevor manages to bring onstage is little short of astonishing. . . . A remarkable record of the distinctive imprint that Trevor has left on what is arguably this century’s quintessential art form.”
—New York Newsday 

From the Publisher