The Story of Lucy Gault - Softcover

Trevor, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014200331X ISBN 13: 9780142003312

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2003

Synopsis

"The Story of Lucy Gault . . . once read, will never be forgotten."--The Washington Post Book World

"Trevor was our twentieth century Chekov."--Wall Street Journal

The stunning novel from highly acclaimed author William Trevor is a brilliant, subtle, and moving story of love, guilt, and forgiveness. The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of violence leads the parents of nine-year-old Lucy to decide to leave for England, her mother's home. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane, their country house with its beautiful land and nearby beach, and a dog she has befriended. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away, hoping to convince her parents to stay. Instead, she sets off a series of tragic misunderstandings that affect all of Lahardane's inhabitants for the rest of their lives.

About this title

Review:

Chance is the central theme and malevolent force of William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault. In this haunting novel, suffused with melancholy, Trevor, a masterful chronicler of the sad, lonely and unfulfilled, recounts the tragic life story of a woman buffeted by fate.

The book opens in County Cork in 1921 with the eponymous Lucy as a small girl oblivious to the changes sweeping across Ireland. The Gaults are a Protestant land-owning family: Lucy's father, Captain Everard, was an officer in the British Army and her mother Heliose is English. When three local lads attempt to set fire to their ancestral home Lahardane (a country house in the vein of Elizabeth Bowen's Bowen's Court) Everard shoots and wounds one of the intruders, Horahan. The shot proves to have disastrous and reverberating consequences for the family: consequences that might appear melodramatic if Trevor didn't unfurl them with such subtlety and poise.

Everard and Heloise opt to leave Ireland but just before they are about to depart Lucy runs away. Convinced that she has drowned, the Gaults reluctantly head off into exile. Lucy is discovered alive but attempts to contact her kin fail. As her parents mournfully journey across Europe, Lucy, raised by two faithful servants, whiles away the years reading and waiting for their return. Her isolated existence at Lahardane is finally broken when Ralph, a young teacher, accidentally stumbles upon the house. Slowly, a romance blossoms, although Lucy, plagued by guilt and the ghosts of the past, is simply unable to grasp this chance of happiness. She does eventually find a kind of redemption (kept tantalisingly until the final chapters) but her tale, told with extraordinary beauty, compassion and precision, is ultimately one of endless disappointments. --Travis Elborough

Review:

"One of Trevor's finest works . . . Few living writers are capable of such mournful depth as William Trevor, and here he has given us an evensong to time itself."
--The Boston Globe

"Trevor was and remains an author against whom other talents are measured. His work earns its place in the canon that 'time's esteem' will keep alive."
--The Economist

"Mr. Trevor's pure observation and transparent prose should shame other writers."
--New York Sun

"Beautifully drawn and revelatory. Beautifully drawn and revelatory."
--Harper's Magazine

"Beautiful and devastating . . . Trevor has once again captured the terrible beauty of Ireland's fate, and the fate of us all-at the mercy of history, circumstance, and the vicissitudes of time."
--Alice McDermott, The Atlantic Monthly

"From the award-winning author of Felicia's Journey and My House in Umbria, a new novel that may well be his masterpiece."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 014200331X
• ISBN 13: 9780142003312
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240