The Children of Dynmouth - William Trevor

How brilliant was this book? How good does a book have to be if you
genuinely want to throttle one of the characters and have to put the book
down because you are cringing? Is there a reading equivalent of "behind the
sofa"? This won the 1976 Whitbread prize for William Trevor - the first of
three Whitbread prizes for the Irish author. I was stunned by the quality of
this, the air of genuine growing menace throughout the narrative then as the
truth dawns the story unfolds remarkably. Basically the simple story
concerns a quiet seaside town set in its ways and the adolescent Timothy
Gedge - called in the introduction a "nuisance". He comes across as someone
who you would cross the street to avoid. He definitely is probably one of
the most annoying characters I have come across; one should like to shake
him warmly by the throat! However as the story gets into its stride it
becomes very dark indeed. I have read Trevor's 1994 novel Felicia's Journey
and the authors style is clear - brooding menace, but in this novel it just
grinds away at you whilst you read growing and growing. I had to stop
several times and take five minutes to let the stress levels return to
normal. What starts off as a simple story of a disturbed boy with an
overdeveloped imagination twists and turns into quite a psychological
thriller. I was never sure what was going to happen next and all the time
there is the sense of growing menace - is there a reading equivalent of
hiding ones face in a cushion?

Its brilliantly descriptive of small town life too - small narrative
passages like the vicar trying to start a petrol mower made me laugh out
loud yet suddenly there was Timothy again - aaargh!!. The smallest aspect of
the town is described in great detail yet the novel is quite short, nothing
is wasted, the simplicity of the storyline yet the complexity too make this
novel almost fault free. It even has a red herring or two to throw one off
the solution. It's a fantastic story that lets the reader go in one
direction then twists them brutally in another. There are some brilliant
characterisations but things are never what they seem. I'd recommend this
for everyone its really quite excellent

"sofa-spud" <comfysofa DeleteThis @here.ok> wrote in message
news:d36k24$jdi$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
 > How brilliant was this book? How good does a book have to be if you
 > genuinely want to throttle one of the characters and have to put the book
 > down because you are cringing? Is there a reading equivalent of "behind
 > the
 > sofa"? This won the 1976 Whitbread prize for William Trevor - the first of
 > three Whitbread prizes for the Irish author. I was stunned by the quality
 > of
 > this, the air of genuine growing menace throughout the narrative then as
 > the
 > truth dawns the story unfolds remarkably. Basically the simple story
 > concerns a quiet seaside town set in its ways and the adolescent Timothy
 > Gedge - called in the introduction a "nuisance". He comes across as
 > someone
 > who you would cross the street to avoid. He definitely is probably one of
 > the most annoying characters I have come across; one should like to shake
 > him warmly by the throat! However as the story gets into its stride it
 > becomes very dark indeed. I have read Trevor's 1994 novel Felicia's
 > Journey
 > and the authors style is clear - brooding menace, but in this novel it
 > just
 > grinds away at you whilst you read growing and growing. I had to stop
 > several times and take five minutes to let the stress levels return to
 > normal. What starts off as a simple story of a disturbed boy with an
 > overdeveloped imagination twists and turns into quite a psychological
 > thriller. I was never sure what was going to happen next and all the time
 > there is the sense of growing menace - is there a reading equivalent of
 > hiding ones face in a cushion?
 >
 > Its brilliantly descriptive of small town life too - small narrative
 > passages like the vicar trying to start a petrol mower made me laugh out
 > loud yet suddenly there was Timothy again - aaargh!!. The smallest aspect
 > of
 > the town is described in great detail yet the novel is quite short,
 > nothing
 > is wasted, the simplicity of the storyline yet the complexity too make
 > this
 > novel almost fault free. It even has a red herring or two to throw one off
 > the solution. It's a fantastic story that lets the reader go in one
 > direction then twists them brutally in another. There are some brilliant
 > characterisations but things are never what they seem. I'd recommend this
 > for everyone its really quite excellent
 >

I'll put this one on my list. I enjoyed the first Trevor novel I read, Death
In Summer (1998) but was disappointed in Lucy Gault, his latest, which
really has been mentioned here before. Is Trevor another case of a prolific
novelist outliving his muse?

I've been thinking about the number of authors with long, prolific careers
who's works tail off as time goes on. So far, Phillip Roth seems to be
holding up well, and I'm sure there are others who you could name, but many
others like Greene and Trevor don't. As I think about writers like
Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, their greatest work came early or in
mid-career. Proust would seem to be a special case since, like Joyce he
spent most of his life working on one or two major works. It remains to be
seen whether Salinger has another great book lying around somewhere or if he
too shot his wad early.

Novelists may do well to live large and die young, or just disappear.

Sam<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->