A book review inspired me, and hopefully you with the following:
"For more than half a century, the 81-year-old [William] Trevor has written of the passions churning beneath the surface of a world where the parlor clock endlessly ticks and the fat on the plates is always congealing. In book after book, he has somehow turned the nondescript and the habitual into the exceptionally vivid and particular: 'Farmers brought in livestock on the first Monday of every month, and borrowed money from one of Rathmoye's [fictional town in Ireland] two banks. They had their teeth drawn by the dentist who practiced in the Square.' The real dramas in this world go largely unspoken; they reach the reader in thought balloons of suppressed desire that the author launches, stealthily, above the idle chatter and run-of-the-mill action. Trevor doesn't even need to start a new paragraph when shifting from one to the other, when showing us that the hand putting on makeup or threading a needle is being operated by a nervous system aflame with anger or shame or longing: "In the crab-apple orchard she scattered grain and the hens came rushing to her. She hadn't been aware that she didn't love her husband."
From "Love and Summer," his latest.
A favorite author whose radiant writing has been a guiding star, for me and maybe for you as we grope our way toward publication.
"For more than half a century, the 81-year-old [William] Trevor has written of the passions churning beneath the surface of a world where the parlor clock endlessly ticks and the fat on the plates is always congealing. In book after book, he has somehow turned the nondescript and the habitual into the exceptionally vivid and particular: 'Farmers brought in livestock on the first Monday of every month, and borrowed money from one of Rathmoye's [fictional town in Ireland] two banks. They had their teeth drawn by the dentist who practiced in the Square.' The real dramas in this world go largely unspoken; they reach the reader in thought balloons of suppressed desire that the author launches, stealthily, above the idle chatter and run-of-the-mill action. Trevor doesn't even need to start a new paragraph when shifting from one to the other, when showing us that the hand putting on makeup or threading a needle is being operated by a nervous system aflame with anger or shame or longing: "In the crab-apple orchard she scattered grain and the hens came rushing to her. She hadn't been aware that she didn't love her husband."
From "Love and Summer," his latest.
A favorite author whose radiant writing has been a guiding star, for me and maybe for you as we grope our way toward publication.
