William Trevor: Revaluations

242 Pages·2013·0.89 MB·English

by  Michael Parker (editor)

William Trevor

Will iam Trevor
Revaluations
Edited by
PAUL DELANEY
and
MICHAEL PARKER
Manchester University Press
Manchester and New York
distributed in the United States exclusively
by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
TTRREEVVOORR 997788007711990077990055 PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iiiiii 0066//0088//22001133 1166::2200
Copyright © Manchester University Press 2013
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 07190 8790 5 hardback
First published 2013
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For Finola and Aleksandra,
Katie Rose and Joe

Contents
Acknowledgements page ix
Notes on contributors xi
List of abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
Paul Delaney and Michael Parker
Part One
1. Learnt by heart: William Trevor and reading 15
Hermione Lee
2. In another country: aspects of Trevor’s England 28
George O’Brien
3. ‘Compassion thrown to the winds’: William Trevor
and postcolonial London 43
C.L. Innes
4. ‘The battlefield has never quietened’: political violence
in the fiction of William Trevor 55
Elmer Kennedy-Andrews
5. William Trevor’s screen fictions: ‘No interest. Not suitable
for treatment’ 76
Lance Pettitt
viii Contents
Part Two
6. The Ireland that we dreamed of?: ‘The Ballroom of Romance’ 95
Tina O’Toole
7. ‘Moments and subtleties and shadows of grey’: reflections
on the narrative mode of Fools of Fortune 110
Michael O’Neill
8. ‘Bid me strike a match and blow’: The Silence in the Garden 125
Derek Hand
9. The tragedy of the return of history: ‘Lost ground’ 134
Jennifer M. Jeffers
10. The power of withholding: politics, gender and narrative technique
in Felicia’s Journey 145
Michael Parker
11. ‘… as if she were a symbol of something …’: The Story of Lucy Gault 162
Tom Herron
12. ‘The art of the glimpse’: Cheating at Canasta 180
Paul Delaney
13. Character, community and critical nostalgia: Love and Summer 198
Heidi Hansson
Bibliography and filmography 213
Index 223
Acknowledgements
The Editors would like to thank formally our contributors and Matthew Frost of
Manchester University Press for their commitment, responsiveness and patience
throughout the project. We would also like to express our gratitude to the
library staff at the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin and the
British Library for their help, and to our work-colleagues for their support and
forbearance.
In relation to Lance Pettitt’s essay, permission is acknowledged to quote from
BBC Written Archive Caversham (WAC), Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and
the Irish Film Institute (IFI); to Kenith Trodd and William Trevor. Amongst
those who generously helped to facilitate viewing audiovisual and print material
were Brid Dooley and Liam Wylie at RTÉ Reference Library, Dublin, Johnson
& Alcock London, Samantha Blake (WAC), Rebecca grant, Karen Wall and
Sunniva O’Flynn at the IFI in Dublin and librarians at the British Film Institute,
London.
Michael Parker would like to thank Christine St Peter as well as New Hibernia
Review’s editor, James Rogers, and its readers for their constructive comments,
which enabled him to revise his essay.
All images from The Ballroom of Romance are courtesy of © BBC/RTÉ 1982.
The Editors are grateful to Barrie Cooke and the Irish Musuem of Modern Art
for permission to reproduce ‘Couple’ as a cover image.