'So is Sylvie Clapper, with false teeth and bleached hair, young witless, cheery. She lives with a slippery Irishman: no children yet and now no chance. Likewise confined, devout Miss Samson with the raw blackberry birthmark worries about her boarding-house, for believers only, and the discovery that her Christian mentor died in disbelief. And Lily Drucker, after repeated abortions, is in for childbirth, while her clawed mother-in-law tries to bait back her son with sausage rolls and Lincoln Creams... And there is William Trevor, taking relays from flies on a hundred walls, snipping, linking, shaping his material with delicate understanding, respect and a sparing trickle - just enough - of humour... A finely observed, gently sensitive comedy, delightful to read, like lived experience to remember' - "Daily Telegraph"
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
'Genteel mostly, respectable all, the world here is London SW, south of the river. With a fruitful marriage (and a quick, astonishing adulterous bounce) behind her, comfortable, amiable Mrs Aidallbery - Elizabeth - is in hospital for a hysterectomy.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
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
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
never skip a Trevor novel,
By
This review is from: Elizabeth Alone (Paperback)
Trevor's prose, as usual, does not fail to disappoint; his language is one of melancholy, longing, and of a quiet despair. In this novel, though, there is a gleam of hope beneath the dusty debris of the everyday, perhaps precisely because, in the lives of the women featured in this novel, the everyday has been disrupted. Each of the four primary female characters (Elizabeth of the title being the central character) is in the hospital, one trying to see through a successful pregnancy after many failures and the other three having hysterectomies. Each, lying in bed and surrounded by strangers, is forced to look at herself through strangers' eyes, to regard herself and the people in her life in a new light. And in each woman's life, a significant rupture occurs during this time of forced contemplation. Trevor thus puts to us the question: what if we were forced to deal with each crisis, removed from the comfort of the everyday, removed from our everyday perfeceptions not only of others but of our very on selves? It is a fascinating question and one that Trevor probes deeply and gently, exposing each nerve fiber laid raw by these circumstances. In the stripped-down setting of a four-bed hospital room, Trevor asks us to realize what it truly is to reflect on the difficulties, troubles, and disasters of daily life-- when we are stripped bare of the defenses that we are so accustomed to using to buffer raw emotions. Elizabeth Alone is a quiet, yet powerful, work.
3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Early Trevor Gem,
This review is from: Elizabeth Alone (Paperback)
Readers of Trevor's more recent books--Death in Summer, Felicia's Journey, Two Lives, After Rain--will enjoy this earlier novel, which has all the trademark Trevor strengths: economy, wit, good carpentry, and that rare thing, truth.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
