Word: irishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Beyond the Pale, the title story of a 1981 Trevor collection, immediately allays any tears that Trevor's subject matter might result in dry and repetitive models. A Georgian seaside lodge on the Irish coast provides the setting for an explosive tale of suburban English couples holidaying in June, playing bridge and going for cliff walks just as they have done for years. Swapping bed as often as bridge-partners, the bonds and tensions webbing these people together is wonderfully conveyed the prejudices and biases that the characters display in their attitudes both towards each other and towards Ireland...
...distinct contrast to this edgy placement of Englishmen on Irish soil (a juxtaposition which comes up repeatedly in Trevor, and specifically in his latest novel, Fools of Fortune); a trilogy of stories entitled Matilda's England is a sublime, melancholic pattern of a woman's reminiscences of a life, of the eras of a country house, of tennis parties and unfulfilled relationships. Here is the retreat into the past, the solace of remembering old pleasures, the ghostly hovering of the past over present dissatisfaction that colors so much of Trevor's work...
...hundred pages. In many respects this is the skeleton of a novel, containing the outlines of an extended tragedy but lacking the body of narrative that usually fills out Trevor's fictions so convincingly, We have, instead, scenes from a tragedy, ghostly excerpts from the history of an Anglo-Irish family...
...sadness too much forced on us by the pilot's multifarious tragedies and not earned by the fleshing out of involving characters (a quality that distinguishes so many of Trevor's short stories). Feels of Fortune remains; nevertheless, a brave attempt to grapple with the Irish tragedy...
...course Fighting Irish fans prefer to remember the intervening year when Notre Dame broke USC's 23-game winning streak enroute to the National Championship. Eight times since 1926, the National Championship has been decided in a USC-Notre Dame game. To win this year's game. 27-6. Notre-Dame pulled a psychological trick out of the bag. The school colors are gold and blue, but the Irish showed up on the field dressed in green jerseys for only the third time in 20 years. The last time they wore green was the last time they beat...