I’ve just come back from a trip to Ireland, and perhaps the biggest thrill along the way was my purchase, in a second-hand bookstore in the seaside town of Kinsale, of a collection of short stories Cheating at Canasta (2008) by William Trevor, who is considered one of the all-time greatest Irish short story writers.
William Trevor (24 May 1928 – 20 November 2016) spent much of his adult life in England, but identified as "Irish in every vein." He wrote novels as well and won the full array of literary prizes.
The first story in this collection, “The Dressmaker’s Child,” haunts me still. It combines elements that run through many of his stories, but does it with a deep grey brilliance. There are troubled characters who become entangled inadvertently. There is trauma that lingers unspoken. There is human connection that is as painful as it is sustaining. There is a cloudy environment expressed with mastery prose.
Many of these pieces, not the least the title story “Cheating at Canasta,” plumb alienation and a sense of difference that perhaps only an emigrant or a person in mourning can convey. There is love, but too often it is lost, even squandered. Writing in the third person, Trevor creates a novel’s-worth of a world in each of these short stories, and, as a voracious reader of short fiction, I leapt hungrily into them.
i leap hungrily into your pieces, katz!
and now you've written about ireland, whither we're headed next month. (and wales) (and long island)
wonderful to hear from you today. i've been studying spanish as i do every day and working on Sinister Wisdom, almost finished!
love,
tracy
Posted by: Tracy Moore | 22 April 2023 at 14:10