Off to School! (Wonder Pets! (8x8))
- Paperback2010, ISBN: 9781416971979
Hardcover
Viking. Good. Paperback. 2010. 228 pages. Cover worn.<br>The inimitable William Trevor returns w ith a story of suspicion, guilt, forbidden love and the possibili ty of starting ove… More...
Viking. Good. Paperback. 2010. 228 pages. Cover worn.<br>The inimitable William Trevor returns w ith a story of suspicion, guilt, forbidden love and the possibili ty of starting over. It s summer, and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stran ger begins photographing the mourners at Mrs. Connulty s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn t know that the Connultys were said to o wn half the town. But Miss Connulty resolves to keep an eye on Fl orian ... and she becomes a witness to the ensuing events. In a c haracteristically masterful way, Trevor evokes the passions and f rustrations in an Irish town during one long summer. Editorial R eviews From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The tragic consequ ences of a woman's lost honor and a family's shame haunt several generations in Trevor's masterful 14th novel. His prose precisely nuanced and restrained, Trevor depicts a society beginning to lo osen itself from the Church's implacable condemnation of sexual i mmorality. Years ago, Miss Connulty's dragon of a mother forced h er into lifelong atonement after she was abandoned by her lover. Now, in the mid-1950s, middle-aged and forever marked for spinste rhood in her small Irish town, she is intent on protecting Ellie Dillahan, the naïve young wife of an older farmer. A foundling ra ised by nuns, Ellie was sent to housekeep for the widowed farmer, and she is content until her dormant emotions are awakened by a charming but feckless bachelor, Florian Kilderry, who has plans t o soon leave Ireland. Their affair is bittersweet, evoking Floria n's regretful knowledge that he will cause heartbreak and Ellie's shy but urgent passion and culminating in a surprising resolutio n. Trevor renders the fictional town of Rathmoye with the precise detail of a photograph, while his portrait of its inhabitants is more subtle and painterly, suggesting their interwoven secrets, respectful traditions and stoic courtesy. (Sept.) Copyright ® Re ed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rig hts reserved. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. Revie w Trevor is fantastically effective at foreboding; he can make a reader squirm just by withholding the next bit of some long-past anterior action he's been recounting. . . . Love and Summer, the latest item from his venerable suitcase, is a thrilling work of a rt. -- Thomas Mallon, The New York Times Marvellously written, c onsummately plotted. . . . One of the joys of Love and Summer is the perfection of its Irish geography and the wealth of emotions attached to it. . . . As brief and beautiful as summer itself, it is a book to be read and reread, as perfect a thing as our blemi shed world can offer -- The Globe and Mail A triumph of style an d content. -- The Herald Love and Summer is so exquisite I had t o pace myself reading it, so it wouldn't end too soon. -- Belfast Telegraph --This text refers to the hardcover edition. From Boo kmarks Magazine Trevor is a master storyteller, and Love and Summ er exhibits all the hallmarks of his most luminous works: his sta rk and graceful prose; his profound insight into the human heart; and his hauntingly authentic characters, precisely sketched in j ust a few short lines. In Trevor's provincial Ireland, every pers on has a story--a secret hope or a heartache--and he teases them out and weaves them together subtly and seamlessly. Gentle, naïve Ellie is the highlight of this spare and nuanced portrayal of fr agile humans dwarfed by life's circumstances (Philadelphia Inquir er), and while Trevor offers no easy answers or tidy endings, he provides a believable and satisfying denouement. Readers, along w ith the critic from the Boston Globe, will find it hard to leave Rathmoye. --This text refers to the hardcover edition. About the Author William Trevor has won the Hawthornden Prize and he is a four-time nominee for the Man Booker Prize. He received the David Cohen Literature Prize recognizing a lifetime s literary achieve ment, and he was knighted for his services to literature. Born in Michelstown, County Cork, he now lives in Devon. --This text ref ers to the hardcover edition. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission . All rights reserved. 1. On a June evening some years after the middle of the last century Mrs Eileen Connulty passed through th e town of Rathmoye: from Number 4 The Square to Magennis Street, into Hurley Lane, along Irish Street, across Cloughjordan Road to the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. Her night was spent there. The life that had come to an end had been one of good works and resolution, with a degree of severity in domestic and family mat ters. The anticipation of personal contentment, which had long ag o influenced Mrs Connulty's acceptance of the married state and t he bearing of two children, had since failed her: she had been di sappointed in her husband and in her daughter. As death approache d, she had feared she would now be obliged to join her husband an d prayed she would not have to. Her daughter she was glad to part from; her son - now in his fiftieth year, her pet since first he lay in her arms as an infant - Mrs Connulty had wept to leave be hind. The blinds of private houses, drawn down as the coffin wen t by, were released soon after it had passed. Shops that had clos ed opened again. Men who had uncovered their heads replaced caps or hats, children who had ceased to play in Hurley Lane were no l onger constrained. The undertakers descended the steps of the chu rch. Tomorrow's Mass would bring a bishop; until the very last, M rs Connulty would be given her due. People at that time said the family Mrs Connulty had married into owned half of Rathmoye, an impression created by their licensed premises in Magennis Street, their coal yards in St Matthew Street, and Number 4 The Square, a lodging house established by the Connultys in 1903. During the decades that had passed since then there had been the acquisition of other properties in the town; repaired and generally put righ t, they brought in modest rents that, accumulating, became a size able total. But even so it was an exaggeration when people said t hat the Connultys owned half of Rathmoye. Compact and ordinary, it was a town in a hollow that had grown up there for no reason t hat anyone knew or wondered about. Farmers brought in livestock o n the first Monday of every month, and borrowed money from one of Rathmoye's two banks. They had their teeth drawn by the dentist who practised in the Square, from time to time consulted a solici tor there, inspected the agricultural machinery at Des Devlin's o n the Nenagh road, dealt with Heffernan the seed merchant, drank in one of the town's many public houses. Their wives shopped for groceries from the warehouse shelves of the Cash and Carry, or in McGovern's if they weren't economizing; for shoes in Tyler's; fo r clothes, curtain material and oilcloth in Corbally's drapery. T here had once been employment at the mill, and at the mill's elec tricity plant before the Shannon Scheme came; there was employmen t now at the creamery and the condensed-milk factory, in builders ' yards, in shops and public houses, at the bottled-water plant. There was a courthouse in the Square, an abandoned railway statio n at the end of Mill Street. There were two churches and a conven t, a Christian Brothers' school and a technical school. Plans for a swimming-pool were awaiting the acquisition of funds. Nothing happened in Rathmoye, its people said, but most of them went on living there. It was the young who left - for Dublin or Cork or L imerick, for England, sometimes for America. A lot came back. Tha t nothing happened was an exaggeration too. The funeral Mass was on the morning of the following day, and when it was over Mrs Co nnulty's mourners stood about outside the cemetery gates, declari ng that she would never be forgotten in the town and beyond it. T he women who had toiled beside her in the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer asserted that she had been an example to them all. They recalled how no task had been too menial for her to undertake, h ow the hours spent polishing a surfeit of brass or scraping away old candle-grease had never been begrudged. The altar flowers had not once in sixty years gone in need of fresh water; the mission ary leaflets were replaced when necessary. Small repairs had been effected on cassocks and surplices and robes. Washing the chance l tiles had been a sacred duty. While such recollections were sh ared, and the life that had ended further lauded, a young man in a pale tweed suit that stood out a bit on a warm morning surrepti tiously photographed the scene. He had earlier cycled the seven a nd a half miles from where he lived, and was then held up by the funeral traffic. He had come to photograph the town's burnt-out c inema, which he had heard about in a similar small town where rec ently he had photographed the perilous condition of a terrace of houses wrenched from their foundations in a landslip. Dark-haire d and thin, in his early twenties, the young man was a stranger i n Rathmoye. A suggestion of stylishness - in his general demeanou r, in his jaunty green-and-bluestriped tie - was repudiated by th e comfortable bagginess of his suit. His features had a misleadin g element of seriousness in their natural cast, contributing furt her to this impression of contradiction. His name was Florian Kil derry. 'Whose funeral?' he enquired in the crowd, returning to i t from where he had temporarily positioned himself behind a parke d car in order to take his photographs. He nodded when he was tol d, then asked for directions to the ruined cinema. 'Thanks,' he s aid politely, his smile friendly. 'Thanks,' he said again, and pu shed his bicycle through the throng of mourners. Neither Mrs Con nulty's son nor her daughter knew that the funeral attendance had been recorded in such a manner, and when they made their way, se parately, back to Number 4 The Square they remained ignorant of t his unusual development. The crowd began to disperse then, many t o gather again in Number 4, others to return to their interrupted morning. The last to go was an old Protestant called Orpen Wren, who believed the coffin that had been interred contained the mor tal remains of an elderly kitchenmaid whose death had occurred th irty-four years ago in a household he had known well. The respect ful murmur of voices around him dwindled to nothing; cars drove o ff. Alone where he stood, Orpen Wren remained for a few moments l onger before he, too, went on his way. * Cycling out of the tow n, Ellie wondered who the man who'd been taking photographs was. The way he'd asked about the old picture house you could tell he didn't know Rathmoye at all, and she'd never seen him on the stre ets or in a shop. She wondered if he was connected with the Connu ltys, since it was the Connultys who owned the picture house and since it had been Mrs Connulty's funeral. She'd never seen photog raphs taken at a funeral before, and supposed the Connultys could have employed him to do it. Or he was maybe off a newspaper, the Nenagh News or the Nationalist, because sometimes in a paper you 'd see a picture of a funeral. If she'd gone back to the house af terwards she could have asked Miss Connulty, but the artificial-i nsemination man was expected and she'd said she'd be there. She hurried in case she'd be late, although she had worked it out tha t she wouldn't be. She would have liked to go back to the house. She'd have liked to see the inside of it, which she never had, al though she'd been supplying Mrs Connulty with eggs for a long tim e. It could be the photographs were something the priests wanted , that maybe Father Balfe kept a parish book like she'd once been told by Sister Clare a priest might. Keeping a book would be mor e like Father Balfe than Father Millane, not that she knew what i t would contain. She wondered if she'd be in a photograph herself . When the camera was held up to take a picture she remembered sl ender, fragile-seeming hands. The white van was in the yard and Mr Brennock was getting out of it. She said she was sorry, and he said what for? She said she'd make him a cup of tea. * After h e had spent only a few minutes at the remains of the cinema, Flor ian Kilderry broke his journey at a roadside public house called the Dano Mahoney. He had been interrupted at the cinema by a man who had noticed his bicycle and came in to tell him he shouldn't be there. The man had pointed out that there was a notice and Flo rian said he hadn't seen it, although in fact he had. 'There's pe rmission needed,' the man crossly informed him, admitting when he snapped shut the two padlocks securing the place that they shoul dn't have been left open. 'See Miss O'Keeffe in the coal yards,' he advised. 'You'll get permission if she thinks fit.' But when F lorian asked about the whereabouts of the coal yards he was told they were closed today as a mark of respect. 'You'll have noticed a funeral,' the man said. In the bar Florian took a glass of wi ne to a corner and lit a cigarette. He had had a wasted journey, the unexpected funeral his only compensation, and from memory he tried to recall the images of it he had gathered. The mourners ha d conversed in twos and threes, a priest among them, several nuns . A few, alone, had begun to move away; others had stood awkwardl y, as if feeling they should stay longer. The scene had been a fa miliar one: he had photographed funerals before, had once or twic e been asked to desist. Sometimes there was a moment of drama, or a display of uncontrollable grief, but today there had been neit her. On the other hand, what he had been allowed to see of the c inema was promising. Through smashed glass a poster still adverti sed Idiot's Delight, the features of Norma Shearer cut about and distorted. He'd been scrutinizing them when the man shouted at hi m, but he never minded something like that. The Coliseum the cine ma had been called, Western Electric sound newly installed. A sm ell of frying bacon wafted into the bar, and voices on a radio. S porting heroes - wrestlers, boxers, jockeys, hurlers - decorated the walls, with greyhounds and steeple-chasers. The publican, a f ramed newspaper item declared, had been a pugilist himself, had g one five rounds with Jack Doyle, the gloves he'd worn hanging fro m a shelf behind the bar. 'Give a rap on the old counter if you'd want a refill,' he advise, Viking, 2010, 2.5, Simon Spotlight/Nickelodeon. Used - Good. Good condition. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains., Simon Spotlight/Nickelodeon, 2.5<
