The Children of Dynmouth [Paperback]

William Trevor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1995

A small, pretty seaside town is harshly exposed by a young boy's curiosity. His prudent interest, oddly motivated, leaves few people unaffected - and the consequences cannot be ignored.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William Trevor was born into a Protestant family in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, before moving to London where he worked as a teacher and as a copywriter in advertising. His first novel was published in 1958. His novels have won many prizes and he has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. He is also regarded as a master of the short story - John Banville called him the greatest living writer of stories. He was awarded an honorary knighthood in 2002. He has lived for many years in Devon. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140047182
• ISBN-13: 978-0140047189
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,003,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written many novels, and has won many prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His most recent novel Love and Summer was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He is also a renowned short-story writer, and his two-volume Collected Stories was published by Viking Penguin in 2009. In 1999 William Trevor received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and in 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. He now lives in Devon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trevor at his sharpest - bitter and sweet., February 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Children of Dynmouth (Paperback)

This darkly funny expose of a British seaside town in the mid 70's is Trevor at his absolute best. Tim Gedge, the maladjusted anti-hero at the centre of the action, is a 12 year old boy with time on his hands and a determination to uncover the secret heartaches and hypocricies at the core of this trim English town. The details are razor sharp, the characters painfully portrayed, and the humour is very, very black - but there is a soul to this story - as there always is with Trevor. It tells you more about us sorry Brits than Notes from a Small Island ever could.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Whimsical Trevor for once, October 17, 2005

By 

Jumpsturdy (Belgium) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Children of Dynmouth (Paperback)

William Trevor continues to lead the pack as my favourite living author throughout the world. His frugal use of the most precise language leaves a reader gasping at times, and he is an unparallelled master tragedian. Here, he has actually crafted a fairly humourous, if naughty, tale of a teenage "tearaway," as he himself might call the lad. Trevor imbues this lonesome council lad with some rather astonishing powers of perception that, once put to work with the singlemindedness reserved solely for what one really really wants, results in a domino effect of despair and destruction that washes over a small, raw, seaside Southern UK town. It remains funny throughout, however, a testament not only to Trevor's many gifts as a story-teller of genius and power but to his love for his flawed characters and thier powers of endurance.

4.0 out of 5 stars The Human Cost of Revealing Secrets, October 12, 2011

By 

John Fitzpatrick (São Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Children of Dynmouth (Penguin Decades) (Paperback)

This book reminded me of A Girl in the Head by J.G Farrell, another Anglo-Irish writer, and to a lesser extent Jonathan Raben's Foreign Land, both of which unveil the sordid underbelly of life in a small coastal town in southern England.

The main character is a creepy 15-year-old boy who seems to know everyone's secrets - or invents such convincing ones that they become almost real - and sets out to blackmail the adults and children alike in order to get what he wants.

What he wants are only some simple props for an act he intends making at a talent contest, such as a tin bath, a man's suit and a wedding dress. He eventually gets them but at an emotional cost that his victims will never be able to pay.

Someone like Farrell would probably have turned the book into a black comedy but Trevor takes more of a Lord of the Flies approach to children and what they can get up to if left on their own.

It is a good read with a strong narrative and Trevor has created some memorable characters like the boy, Timothy Gedge, the "Commander" who gets him drunk and the clergyman's wife who has to cope with her private grief while ministering to the derelicts who turn up at the vicarage door demanding help.

However, he does not convincingly portray the relationship between Gedge and the 12-year-old boy and girl he harries. Nor does he do a good job of explaining the relationship between the boy and girl, whose parents have just married.

Furthermore, the idea that the Commander has been a secret homosexual all his life and his marriage of 36 years has not been consummated is a little difficult to accept.