Word: trevor
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OTHER PEOPLE'S WORLDS by William Trevor; Viking; 243 pages...
...William Trevor is an Irish-born novelist and short-story writer highly regarded for the had understated manner in which he suggests that quot;real life" and other a illusions may be dangerous to one's health. His deadpan style disguises a compassion for the peevish, the confused and the lonely. The Old Boys (1964) and The Boarding House (1965) had funny moments; yet the novels' deeper impressions were made by sympathy for the elderly and middle-aged attempting to preserve a fleeting respectability. The Love Department (1967) rollicked along on the efforts of a lovelorn columnist...
That little monster appears to have grown into Trevor's newest menace, Francis Tyte, 33, a bit-part actor, pathological dissembler, bigamist and homosexual prostitute. Tyte's face, lean and handsome in the Leslie Howard mold, is known to millions of British telly viewers. He is the fellow in the tobacco ad who nonchalantly puffs a pipe while military officers strut by, sniffing...
...Julia a fool or a saint? Is there a difference? One suspects that William Trevor does not think so, though he is too careful a novelist to ruin his effects with philosophical inquiry. His effects are startling in their range and complexity. Trevor can be sharply funny, as in his description of a television director: "Attired in what appeared to be the garb of a plumber but which closer examination revealed to be a fashionable variation of such workman's clothing: his dungarees were of fawn corduroy, his shirt of red and blue lumberjack checks. He wore boots that...
...chatting and gardening in Stone St. Martin is juxtaposed with Tyte turning tricks in a London parking lot. The most pathetic victims of his lies are the seduced shopgirl and his neglected daughter, the former sliding into alcoholism, the latter turning into a potentially dangerous sociopath like her father. Trevor has an uncanny understanding of love, delusion, hope and, in Tyte's case, the buried anger that "had driven him in search of presents." It is a tribute to the author's moral instincts and talent for psychological realism that one can sympathize with Tyte and also want...