Customer Reviews

Cheating at Canasta: Stories

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The last story in this wonderful collection has a French title, "Folie à Deux," but it is about an Irishman who happens to spend a few days in Paris in pursuit of his hobby, philately, stamp collection. The philatelist is also a bit of a philanderer, but that is no more than part of the backdrop. Our hero has a modest meal in a bistro, and perhaps more than a modest amount of alcohol. More backdrop. And then it happens. His childhood reappears. I would not dream of giving away just how this occurs, but I can say that the hour or so that I spent reading this marvelous story cast a spell over my day.

And so it is with the rest of this new collection. Readers of the "New Yorker" will no doubt rediscover old friends among the other stories, but this will hardly diminish the intense enjoyment of rereading.

This volume confirms it once again: there is no greater writer in our day than William Trevor.

In these haunting stories, seemingly ordinary situations erupt into defining moments that give new direction to a person's life. Pity, regret, deception are everyday occurrences in human relationships, but here they take on larger dimensions.
With unobtrusive prose and subtle shadings, Trevor leads us into lives that have nothing exceptional about them, that might well be our own. The story does not end with the last line on the page; it prods our imagination to come up with different interpretations, different outcomes, new ways of understanding.

I have been an admirer of Trevor's art for many years. While earlier collections had a certain timelessness about them, these new stories acknowledge the presence of cell phones and word processors, of chat rooms and latte shops. But the essential human dilemmas remain the same.

I was convinced long ago that William Trevor is a master of the short story. I so enjoy luxuriating in his collections that I now intentionally pass by the occasional story in "The New Yorker" in favor of the delayed but ever-so-greater gratification of an entire volume of stories every three or four years. The latest collection of a dozen Trevor short stories is CHEATING AT CANASTA. After reading the first three stories, I feared that perhaps Trevor was slipping a tad. While quite accomplished technically, they did not touch my inner being. But the remaining stories put any such fears to rest. Once again, Trevor proves himself a master of the short story in English.

And once again, I marvel over how Trevor seems to be able to write about anything, about anyone -- to weave a story out of the unlikeliest stray rags and scraps of yarn. Here, many of the characters are from the working class or lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Those who are not nonetheless are not among society's glamorous or smug. None of Trevor's characters (here or as far as I remember from his other works) would ever have expected their lives, public or private, to be worthy of the attention of a great writer or legions of sensitive readers. They are common, yet in Trevor's renderings they become uncommon.

A theme shared by all these stories is deception, even between two seemingly very close people. Yet the tone rarely is one of anger. Instead, it is one of gentle ruefulness, tinged with melancholy, at times approaching a world-weariness. The narrative is sparse, almost minimalistic. Yet Trevor's voice is so assured, so authoritative, but without ever being overbearing.

In truth, I can't imagine anyone who appreciates literate short stories not relishing the stories of William Trevor, including CHEATING AT CANASTA.

Life as it was lived before the ubiquitous use of anti-depressants. No Prozac in the water system here. Read and be enveloped by the emotion, the heart-wrenching reality of life in the raw. You can feel the sorrow, the embrace of an ineluctable reality, the inescapable path of Destiny. Feel the bleak damp in your bones, the drizzle on your skin. Smell the peat. These stories will linger with you for a long time. Another masterpiece by Ireland's favorite son.

Not one to waste words, William Trevor's sentences are so concise that they're not the most easy to read as so much information is packed in. His pithy prose demands full concentration from the reader; glean it over with a cursory eye and important nuances are lost. But when you do pay attention, huge rewards await you.

This collection of 12 tales draws together a myriad of characters:
a 73 year-old almost abandoned wife grapples with the omnipresence of her husband's lover, the not-so clandestine relationship kept oppressively alive by the lover's best friend in the most eerie vicarious fashion in 'Old Flame';

a man meets an old friend who was irreparably damaged by their complicit cruel act of childhood folly, and is loathe to face what his relatively unscathed self implies about his own humanity in 'Folie a Deux';

a pair of middle-aged siblings grapple with their bullying yet symbiotic relationship that is built largely on 'Faith', misplaced or otherwise;

a lonely teenage girl meets her online acquaintance,with near disastrous results, but she seems none the wiser from this episode.

Many other characters dot the rest of the stories, and their presence linger on way after Trevor writes the last word about them.

This wonderful collection of short stories could only have been written by an Irish author of world stature.
In all the stories we hear the the pathos, pessimism, poetry, and idiom of Ireland. Events determine the plots and the thoughts and actions of the characters. There is a predestination which cannot be changed.
In "Bravado" a teenage girl witnesses a murder that was committed to impress her. She is not forthcoming in the solution of the crime. She had experienced a moment of pleasure.Her life is internally aborted. She attends school at a convent but remains emotionally isolated. She knows she might go away, try for a new beginning. The last sentance "Instead she stayed, a different person too, belongong where the thing had happened."
Allen Terdiman

This latest offering by prolific author William Trevor contains a dozen short stories. The Los Angeles Times compares his stories to those of James Joyce and Alice Munro. His writing is economical, compact and full of nuance. He provides some details as to what is occurring, but much is left to the reader's imagination to determine an actual outcome; he uses subtlety quite effectively. Trevor's themes of deception, guilt, loss, regret, forgiveness and other such topics are crafted around entirely believable characters and their sometimes tenuous relationships.

The title story is about promises made and promises kept. Mallory and Julia had always dined at Harry's Bar when they traveled to Venice. Julia, who suffered from memory loss, extracted a promise from him to return there alone after she was gone. Trevor hints at Alzheimer's by the symptoms he provides but leaves her actual diagnosis to the reader's imagination. Mallory visited Julia at her place of confinement, and they attempted to play canasta as they had so many times over their years together. Though Julia could not even hold on to her cards, Mallory always made sure Julia won the game because it made her happy. Mallory is dining by himself at Harry's Bar in Venice and feels rather foolish being there just to fulfill a promise made to Julia four years previously. While eating his meal and feeling quite awkward being alone, Mallory overhears a quarrel between two other diners, and he imagines the discussion he and Julia might have had about that. As the couple prepares to leave the restaurant, Mallory engages these complete strangers in conversation.

In "An Afternoon" 15-year old Jasmin meets a 30-something fellow with whom she recently had become acquainted on a chat line. The stranger takes her to McDonald's for coffee, then to an establishment called The Gold Mine where he supplies her with a little cash to play the slot machines. He wins a prize for her --- a cheap necklace from a machine. They walk around a bit, and Clive (by now he has supplied a name, though not his actual name) offers her some alcohol. The afternoon continues on with Jasmin agreeing to go back to his place. By now it is apparent that Clive is the type of stranger all mothers warn their daughters about. The tone of the story, an undercurrent of possible danger, is quite effective.

In "Men of Ireland" the topic is guilt. The question is who is the guilty party and why. A down-and-out drifter named Donal Prunty returns home to Ireland after an absence of 23 years. While hitchiking he tries unsuccessfully to panhandle a kindly truck driver. At the mere mention of money the driver stops the truck and lets Prunty out. When Donal shows up at the rectory the next day, the old priest, Father Meade, remembers him and is none too happy to see him again. Donal hints at what the reader must assume is the sexual molestation of him when he was an altar boy. The old cleric is astounded by Donal's accusations. Why, then, does he give in and pay Donal? Is it hush money, charitable money, or money to make him leave?

Nine other stories add more twists and turns to the excellent writing. In "At Olivehill" a once-prosperous family struggles to retain their dignity and standing in the community as they are forced to sacrifice much of their land for what they believe to be a financially secure future. In "The Dressmaker's Child" a young mechanic hits and kills a young retarded girl. In exchange for her silence, the mechanic is blackmailed into an unsavory alliance with the child's unscrupulous mother.

William Trevor understands human nature and is able to breathe life into his characters. This collection of short stories would make an excellent subject for a book club discussion.

--- Reviewed by Carole Turner

These stories are very well written and Trevor's reputation is deserved. My one reservation is the fact that the stories are somewhat down beat and one just longs for a story illuminated by joy and peace but alas there are none of that type in this collection. I will make some observations on each of the stories, really to try and distill down my own reactions to stories:

(I) The Dressmaker's Child: a very strange story about a bond beginning to form between a man who accidentally knocks down and kills a wild child (daughter of an off-beam mother) and the subsequent incipient relationship that begins to form betweem the man and the mother. Really not sure I understood this story.

(II)The Room: a disturbing story about a woman married to a man, who was accused but not convicted of murder and her suspicious of his part in the murder and her trying to come terms with this over many years. The story resonates and disturbs.

(III) Men of Ireland: A tramp returning from England to Ireland after 23 years and his attempt to capitalise on the scandals in Ireland by soliciting money from a retired priest through insinuating the priest had tried to press drink on him when he was a young altar boy. The priest gives in through a kind of shared shame. A disturbing story.

(IV) Cheating at Canasta: a man returning to venice in response to a wish made by his wife before dementia took hold of her. I was failry neutral about this story.

(V) Bravado: another distrubing story, this time about a lad trying to impress his girlfriend by beating another lad on the way home from a party with fatal consequents. One comes away with a sense of utter pointlessness

(VI)An Afternoon: I did not like this story at all: a young girl and a predatory young man on probation.

(VII) At Olivehill: A catholic ascendancy familiy having fallen on hard times decides to sell their farm to be converted into a golf course. This was moving - a sense of change and a sense of loss.

(VIII) A Perfect relationship: the ending of a relationship between a young woman and an older man. A kind of moving story, particularly the ending where there is no real resolution of what is causing the relationship to end.

(IX) The Children: A recently widowed man taking up with a divorced lady and their decision to marry and the impact on their repsective children - a moving story.

(X) Old flame: An elderly couple and the husband's continuing to keep in contact with a woman for whom he had once intended to leave his wife. This is a puzzling story of how a couple and can live with such duplicity and how the wife is being crushed by the husband's old attachment.

(XI) Faith: This was one of my favourites about a Church of Ireland clergy man and his dominant sister. He appears to lose his faith whilst serving his country parish while she is undimished in her dying - indeed she is given a beautifully written happy death:

"She turned away, shuddering off a convulsion as best she could, but another came and she was restless. Confused, she tired to sit up and he eased her back to the pillows. For a moment then her eyes were clear, her contorted features loosed and were calm. Batholomoew knew that pain was taken from her and that she shed, in her first moment of her eternity, he too-long gnawing discontent; that peace, elusive for a lifeime, had come at last".

Any yet the minster remains at a loss?

(XII) Folie a deux: a story about not accepting forgiveness and redemption - the killing of a dog by 2 young lads results in the apparent disintegration of one of them through the sheer horror of what he had done.

Even though it would be fair to say that the stories were indeed down beat and lacking in hope, Trevor's economic style carries one along and one is infused with a kind of regret for lost lives.

Reviewing William Trevor's THE STORY OF LUCY GAULT on this site some years ago, I wrote: "There are very few authors whom one trusts to lead one into dark places, with the assurance that there will be some beauty to be found there in the end. Trevor is emphatically one of them." In that book, in his novel FELICIA'S JOURNEY, and in almost all of his short stories, Trevor writes about the lost, the lonely, characters who are very young or growing old, people who have been deceived, rejected, or bereaved. But he also has the gift of benediction. The title of his previous collection, AFTER RAIN, is well-taken; his ability to bring the sun out after the storm is miraculous -- to produce not always a happy ending, but at least acceptance and understanding, a quiet gift of grace.

The stories in CHEATING AT CANASTA are just as good, but they are rather more sad. Trevor still has the power to set up a nuanced situation in a very few pages: the impending sale of an old estate in Ireland, an accidental encounter in Paris recalling boyhood traumas. He can still create characters who pull at your heartstrings: a fifteen-year-old girl meeting an older man from a chatroom, a widower finding love again after the death of his wife. And in story after story, he can still end gently with hard-won wisdom: a separated couple coming together again only to realize they were better apart, an old clergyman in doubt of his faith finding peace at the deathbed of his domineering sister. But while all the endings seem absolutely right, none of them is entirely happy. Trevor's rainfall still stops, but now mostly gives way to a tranquil dusk. I appreciate that... but do miss the occasional rainbow. [4.5 stars]

William Trevor continues his short-story excellence with this collection. A wonderful, spirited read! Enjoy, and rest assured that if this is the first Trevor collection you're purchasing, it won't be the last! If you're a long-time fan, you will not be disappointed.