Rating: 
Summary: A tale of love and forgiveness
Review: William Trevor masterfully crafted a wonderful story about loss, love, guilt, and forgiveness, all packed into a short novella.
The story centers around an English family who faced animosity while residing in their historical home in Ireland. After a freak accident involving a innocent shooting, Captain Gault decided to take his wife and daughter out of Ireland. The day before their departure, the daughter Lucy, not wanting to leave her home, ran away. When Lucy's torn clothes were found, it was believed that she has died. Heartbroken, Captain Gault and his wife set sail for Europe, deciding never to return or have any ties to their homeland.
Lucy survived but was bundled wtih guilt of driving her parents to despair. For the remainder of her life, Lucy hopes for the return of her parents and seeks forgiveness from them. She believes a girl like her deserves no happiness. The most memorable scenes is the love story between Ralph, the neighbor's tutor, and Lucy. Lucy turned down proposal from the man she was madly in love with, because she has not yet been forgiven. Trevor wrote the most heart-wrenching prose, detailing how a man and a woman who professed their love for each other but are torn apart over a childhood folly.
Will Captain Gault and his wife ever return to Ireland? How will they react if they see that their daughter was still alive? Will Lucy ever able to reunite with her parents and seek forgiveness? Does Ralph still love Lucy after so many years? Will he return to Lucy? Read this novel if you want answers to these questions.
Rating:
Summary: Elegiac and distinguished, this is literature at its finest
Review: William Trevor may seem incongruous alongside the other contemporary writers shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize award. Yet his prose - elegiac, graceful and distinguished, infused with an Irish sensibility that is unmistakeably his - retains its old school charm with the power to move and touch readers that makes Trevor an evergreen and a literary giant today. True, I can't see many casual readers hitting the bookstores for "The Story Of Lucy Gault (LG)". It isn't the stuff that bestsellers are made of. It's a sad, sad story, slow moving with few points of high drama and hardly a plot to speak of. You can have the synopsis in three sentences. The values and sentiments that drive Lucy's decisions are also peculiarly early 20th century and may not be fully appreciated by young readers today. But Trevor never ever hits a false note and if you're looking for literary qualities in a book, you'll find liberal doses of it in LG. The theme of loss, longing, missed opportunity and disappointment that permeates LG is treated by Trevor in the most unsentimental manner. Even deaths in the family are marked by a quiet acceptance that recalls the passing of a season. The politics and religion of Ireland is kept strictly on neutral, reflecting possibly Trevor's own ecumenical position on these matters. Even the unfortunate incident that sparked off the calamitous chain of events results in a fall out on both sides, the Gaults as well as the Horahans. Lucy and young Horahan are finally victims of guilt. Both see the need to atone for their childish acts of petulance or anger and the pain they had unwittingly caused others. Lucy deals with her own guilt by denying herself happiness with Ralph. Poor young Horahan has fewer choices. Haplessly drifting from job to job, he meets his tragic fate in the end. Lucy blames Horahan for her own failed life, yet their communion suggests Lucy's perception that they are united in their matyrdom. Because Trevor's characters hold so much of their feelings in check, the sense of release we experience when they let rip of their emotions is simply devastating, as in Lucy's breakdown scene with her father. Heartbreak at its most shattering. Read "The Story Of Lucy Gault". This is literature at its finest.
Rating: 
Summary: "I cannot make do with memories."
Review: William Trevor's novel, "The Story of Lucy Gault" begins in Ireland in the year 1921. Lucy is 9 years old--the only child of Captain Gault, a WWI survivor and his English wife, Heloise. The Gault family lives quietly on their large estate, Lahardane. As the novel begins, political troubles begin to spill over to Lahardane, and Captain Gault and his wife decide to leave their home and seek safety in England. The Gaults want to protect Lucy from the political ugliness, so they shield her from the reason for their departure. All that Lucy understands is that she is being forced to leave the only home she's ever known, and she doesn't want to go. Lucy makes a decision, and this decision has a powerful impact on the Gault family for the next 6 decades. William Trevor is a great favourite of mine, and while "The Story of Lucy Gault" was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, I don't think it's his best novel. While the writing is impeccably smooth (as always), somehow the characters left a lot to be desired. The narration seems so remote from the characters, and the style almost cold. The story is partly to blame for this, I think, as the characters are acted upon--and not action takers--after Lucy's initial defiance. They all seem to drift both literally and emotionally from that point on. There's an overwhelming sadness and defeat in these pages, and while the novel is flawless, I really wanted the characters to do SOMETHING--ANYTHING--except sigh, hang their heads and continue to accept their fate--such as it was--with such an endless aura of defeat. I much prefer Trevor when his characters have some nastiness to them--displacedhuman
Rating:
Summary: "I cannot make do with memories."
Review: William Trevor's novel, "The Story of Lucy Gault" begins in Ireland in the year 1921. Lucy is 9 years old--the only child of Captain Gault, a WWI survivor and his English wife, Heloise. The Gault family lives quietly on their large estate, Lahardane. As the novel begins, political troubles begin to spill over to Lahardane, and Captain Gault and his wife decide to leave their home and seek safety in England. The Gaults want to protect Lucy from the political ugliness, so they shield her from the reason for their departure. All that Lucy understands is that she is being forced to leave the only home she's ever known, and she doesn't want to go. Lucy makes a decision, and this decision has a powerful impact on the Gault family for the next 6 decades. William Trevor is a great favourite of mine, and while "The Story of Lucy Gault" was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, I don't think it's his best novel. While the writing is impeccably smooth (as always), somehow the characters left a lot to be desired. The narration seems so remote from the characters, and the style almost cold. The story is partly to blame for this, I think, as the characters are acted upon--and not action takers--after Lucy's initial defiance. They all seem to drift both literally and emotionally from that point on. There's an overwhelming sadness and defeat in these pages, and while the novel is flawless, I really wanted the characters to do SOMETHING--ANYTHING--except sigh, hang their heads and continue to accept their fate--such as it was--with such an endless aura of defeat. I much prefer Trevor when his characters have some nastiness to them--displacedhuman
Rating: 
Summary: The profile of the Irish writer: William Trevor.
Review: William Trevor William Trevor does not like speaking about the art of writing. He says that writing a novel is like a mystery and as soon as you break it you lose a crucial part of the novel. In his writing he pays atttention to details, which bring the characters to life. He is known as one of the best short story writers in English language. He describes himself as the short story writer who writes the occcasional novel. His latest novel : " The story of Lucy Gault " is nominated for the booker. It begins in 1921 when the privilaged Anglo- Irish are forced to leave Ireland as the new republic is being formed in violent circumstances. The story beings in the post war Europe and ends in the age of cell phones. There is too much to say it the novel, too much background which you have to attend to. It is not just a glimpse of the past, it gives you a broader perspective on the post war Ireland. When the parents of Lucy decide to leave Ireland, their daugher is absolutlely against it. She does not want to leave the woods, seashore and her home. The story is about a child who decides to run away, and the terrible consequnces. It is about the never ending sense of guilt, and forgivness. Lucy Gault, like many of Trevor's characters is an outsider.She is in the wolrd of her own making. Trevor says that the role of the outsider is fammiliar to him.
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