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67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unforgettable, July 21, 2009
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In this wonderfully detailed snapshot of a vanishing Ireland, a young woman falls in love too quickly, a young man falls in love too slowly, and the consequences are ultimately heart-wrenching. The book starts in a passive voice that demands the reader's full attention to understand fully what is going on. After a bit I recognized this as a sort of verbal averted vision, conveying respect for a funeral in progress. The skill with which this was accomplished amazed me, and though I was glad to have the book then proceed in a more conventional narrative, I noted other areas where style variations conveyed as much of the book's substance as the literal sense of the words did. Wow! The book is set in village/rural Ireland in a vaguely specified time that I guess would be about 1965. The material culture, characters, their interactions, institutions that effect them - everything that enters into the story is detailed concisely yet clearly enough to recognize this as a regional story, not just a generic Ireland, but probably in the middle-south of the island. It may be useful to know some details of Irish life already - for example it is helpful at one point know that in Ireland "Pioneers" are sworn teetotalers - but much of this you will get by osmosis through the book. The characters are so real I will surely not forget them. The old servant, cast off by the fled aristocracy, whose dementia-driven ravings seem about as clear as a classical Oracle and ultimately turn the story. The young woman, "placed" on a widower's farm out of Catholic orphanage, married for respect and security, who stumbles on her first experience of love. The observant spinster, inheritor of the boarding house, who sees right to the heart of the girl's peril in a single bit of street conversation glimpsed through a window. No-one is very demonstrative, but the people can see each other's hearts directly. On reflection I understood that to depend on not only the inevitable interest and effective intimacy of a sparse village and rural population, but on their homogeneous culture. In America, and in much of Ireland today, the basis for that sort ready understanding is eroded, and misunderstanding is more likely. Thus I saw this as a story of a very particular time and place, not just in its setting but in its core. I'm not going to detail the story, and I hope other reviewers will refrain as well; it deserves to be discovered as read. Parts of the book may seem very deliberate in the story's development, even a bit staid; but the full weight of the entire work comes to bear in the ending. I highly recommend this book to read and re-read. [This review was written based on an Advance Uncorrected Proof edition of the book]
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
All in Good Time, July 28, 2009
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Consider the opening paragraph. "On a June evening some years after the middle of the last century Mrs Eileen Connulty passed through the town of Rathmoye: from Number 4 The Square to Magennis Street, into Hurley Lane, along Irish Street, across Cloughjordan Road to the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. Her night was spent there." How beautifully it sets the period, establishes the mid-sized Irish town, brushes against the mild pretension of "Number 4 The Square," and adds its final piece of delayed information: Mrs. Connulty was in her coffin. William Trevor treads with assurance on familiar ground, but he never quite walks in straight lines; he will tell you what you need to know only when you need it. In this book where nothing much happens -- at least to the outward eye -- it is important that things be told at their proper pace and in the right order. At this, Trevor is the acknowledged master. Mrs. Connulty's funeral gives us occasion to meet the main characters, who are few. The old lady's middle-aged son and daughter, both business people in the town. An elderly man whose mind is stuck thirty years back. Ellie, a naive young woman from the countryside. And a strange young man on a bicycle who takes photographs. The only major character not present is Dillahan, Ellie's husband, a sheep-farmer who has his reasons for avoiding company. I am only at the start of the second chapter, and already I have revealed more than the author (although the jacket blurb gives away almost the entire plot). Taking his time, but never wasting words, Trevor will tell us more of Dillahan's tragedy, and how he came to marry this dutiful girl from the orphanage. He will have us meet the bicycling photographer, Florian Kilderry, living alone in a crumbling mansion outside town. He will have Florian meet Ellie, unaware at first that she is married, and gradually let us enter both their hearts. And he will establish the older characters as town chorus, occasional bit-players, and individuals with past secrets of their own. In novels such as THE STORY OF LUCY GAULT, and even more in his story collections like the perfectly-titled AFTER RAIN, Trevor has shown an amazing ability to emerge from apparent tragedy with an outcome that, though seldom the storybook ending, is emotionally consoling and morally right. Although LOVE AND SUMMER is not his strongest book, in this respect he does not disappoint. We may think we know these people and what is going to happen... but then Trevor slowly reveals more of each of them, here deepening our sympathies, there shading them with further knowledge. Over the course of the long summer, the emotional perspective slowly shifts. By the time the senile old man stumbles back into the picture, bringing a muddled epiphany, we will understand that the surprising resolution is really the only one possible.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
William Trevor does it again - just wonderful, July 21, 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Brief summary, no spoilers: This beautiful little book takes place during one summer. The time is the mid 1950s. Ellie Dillahan is a young woman, married to a kindly farmer (referred to as "Dillahan" in the book) who is several years older. Ellie was a foundling, raised in the convent where she was left as an infant. She is sent directly from that convent to work for Dillahan, and after a couple of years they marry. We know that years earlier there was a terrible accident of some sort, and that Dillahan's wife and child were killed. Ellie is a comfort to him and he is a good husband to her. Into this picture comes Florian Kilderry, a young man raised affectionately by two bohemian parents. When he happens to be in Ellie's town taking pictures of a funeral, they meet, and Ellie falls in love. Ellie must decide between her husband and Florian - and Trevor shows us that the choice is anything but easy. There are other assorted wonderful characters. The book starts out with a funeral, and we become acquainted with the dead woman's twin daughter and son. Something terrible has happened to the daughter, and we know that she and the mother didn't get along. The daughter takes a special interest in Ellie and Florian. We also meet a deranged older man named Orpen, who becomes an important player in the story. This is a very short book, and you can probably read it in a few hours. But it packs a big punch. The language is just beautiful, and Trevor paints a wonderful picture of a small Irish town in the 1950s, and how our past has everything to do with the choices we make now. Recommended. William Trevor is one of my favorite writers, and this book demonstrates why.
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