by William Trevor(New York: Penguin Books, 2004)
Trade Paperback, 245 Pages, Short Fiction Anthology
ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE
From the Cover: William Trevor is truly a Chekhov for our age, and a new collection of stories from him is always a cause for celebration. In these twelve stories, a waiter divulges a shocking life of crime to his ex-wife; a woman repeats the story of her parents’ unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy; a schoolgirl regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her; and, in the volume’s title story, a middle-aged accountant offers his reasons for ending a love affair. At the heart of this stunning collection is Trevor’s characteristic tenderness and unflinching eye for both the humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and rural life.
This collection includes the following stories: “Sitting with the Dead,” “Traditions,” “Justina’s Priest,” “An Evening Out,” “Graillis’s Legacy,” “Solitude,” “Sacred Statues,” “Rose Wept,” “Big Bucks,” “On the Streets,” “The Dancing-Master’s Music,” and “A Bit on the Side.”
My Reveiw: I have never read a Chekhov story (that I can remember). Russian literature and drama never really was my thing. However, Chekhov did say something that I have always liked, and that I think can be applied to Trevor. He, Chekhov, insisted that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Whether or not Trevor is “truly a Chekhov for our age” (as the back of the book insists) and whether or not he lives up to Chekhov’s literary tradition, he does fulfill Chekhov’s idea that it is better to ask questions than answer them. Trevor does this a lot in all of the stories in this anthology. There are a lot of questions here, and very little (if any) answers.
Since I don’t have Chekhov as a frame of reference, I can’t compare or contrast … but I have been reading a lot of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories lately, and even though he is a contemporary author, Trevor has a lot in common with Hemingway and his style. There are very clipped sentences, some very dry, ironic humor and not a lot of explanation. Also, like Hemingway (and possibly like Chekhov, I don’t know) Trevor takes the expected and traditional forms and turns them on their head.
Most striking is the lead-off story in the collection, “Sitting with the Dead.” It is a traditional Irish wake story and it is a bit of a ghost story, but the outcome is not what you think and neither is the ghost, when it is finally revealed. There are others that are equally as good: “Justina’s Priest” is a bit of a Christ story that has been stood on its head; “An Evening Out” is an odd little vignette in the lives of two lonely strangers who use each other; “On the Streets” is a creepy story that I wish I had written, and the title story, “A Bit on the Side,” is a n oddly moving drama about a man calling it off with his mistress.
There is a lot here, and all of it is very good. Trevor is an author whose work I’ll be keeping an eye out for in the future.
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