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A Booker Potentate: William Trevor

© Diana Adams

William Trevor already has a plethora of literary awards to his name, and he has recently been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Described as an Irish Writer living in England, Trevor gained acclaim as a sculptor before turning his attention to writing fiction. He has said that sculpting was too abstract and that he needed 'people' in his art. Hence his characters were born, they live on the page and are now eagerly anticipated around the world. After 12 novels, many short stories, as well as novellas, plays, travel essays and memoirs, William Trevor has presented us with The Story of Lucy Gault. This time his story is favored to win the Man Booker Prize.

The Story of Lucy Gault is the last of a trilogy that includes Fools of Fortune (which won the Whitbread Prize in 1983),and The Silence in the Garden (it won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award in 1988). Each novel stands well on its own, and all three are set in rural Ireland in the 1920's.

Lucy Gault foolishly runs away from home, because her parents have decided to leave Ireland and intend to live in exile during the violent year of partition in Ireland. Not wanting to leave, Lucy flees. Similar to stories in fairy tales or allegory, Lucy becomes lost in the woods. Her parents believe that she has drowned and now have even more reason to want to leave Ireland, for it is now the home of grief. Lucy is eventually found alive, but starving and is then raised by Henry and Bridget. Her parents, however are beyond communication and traveling around Europe, trampling out their grief in transience and anonymity. William Trevor's skill as a novelist is put to the test, as the reader must suspend his/or her belief that communication between the daughter and parents is not possible. Most critics have acknowledged that Trevor has managed to pull it off. However some reviews, recently in Toronto's Globe&Mail, suggest that the novel fails on this very point.

In some ways William Trevor's work mirrors the work of Ian McEwan. Perhaps both authors share the same muse, for Trevor's previous novel Death in Summer is similar to McEwans A Child in Time in dealing with a missing, or kidnapped child. Lucy Gault, interestingly enough, traverses some of the territory similar to Ian McEwan's Atonement in that both novels center on the decisions and grim consequences of child. I don't think there is any room for a conversation about either author influencing the other; each author is distinct in voice and art, and a master of words in his own very unique way.

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