[The above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with
an occasional aside thrown in for good measure as they strike me as
relevant. I welcome questions, comments,
or concerns about the material contained in this video.]
This review contains spoilers.
This is a wonderful, evocative novel tracing the life of the Gault family beginning during The Troubles in the twenties. Fearing reprisals against Irish nationalists and a previous attempt to burn down their family estate, Lahardane, the Captain Everard Gault and his wife Helene consider fleeing for the Continent. Lucy, their daughter, overhears them talking about moving, but wants to do anything but move from her home on the Irish seaside, the only place she has ever known. In an act of lapsarian rebellion, Lucy runs off into the woods abutting Lahardane just as the Gaults are getting ready to leave, and they end up having to leave without her. Later, the servants (a husband and wife named Henry and Bridget) that are left behind to tend the house stumble on Lucy, and decide to stay behind and raise her there.
She leads a reclusive life, socialized by only an old local canon, a solicitor charged with looking after the house – a displaced child in a world of adults - and the library of books her parents left behind. She meets and is dutifully courted by a young, earnest boy named Ralph who has been invited to be the tutor of a couple of local boys, and while she very much returns his affection, her sense of abandonment lingers, and whenever Ralph shows his romantic interest, she coolly refuses him. He leaves at the end of the summer, and much later Lucy sees in the newspaper that he has married another woman.
Very occasionally, we get flits of the life that Everard and Helene are leading in Europe. Her heart is understandably broken, but she can’t stand of returning to Lahardane even though Lucy is still there. She dies of influenza before she can ever see her daughter again. However, as an old man Captain Gault eventually makes his way back to Lahardane to see Henry, Bridget, and Lucy. While the servants understandably expect Lucy to be thrilled with his return, her relationship with him seems just as inadequate as her relationship with Ralph. Long silences and short, terse replies from Lucy dominate their conversations, even as her father tries to engage her meaningfully, and we immediately know that this is not the silence of rejection, but rather one of a young girl who was forced into an exile all her own, though not a physical one. While he is at Lahardane, one of the boys, named Horahan, who tried to burn down the estate decades earlier shows up and tells of his part in the attempted arson, and he expressed his deep, heart-felt anguish and regret at what he has done. One night, Captain Gault quietly passes away in his sleep.
In her later years, she visits Horahan in an asylum where he has been driven to the verge of madness from his guilt, comforting and talking to him. It is finally in Horahan, who has riven the Gault family into pieces, whom Lucy finally finds her redemption. The end of the final sees Lucy passing the days as an elderly woman. On the radio, she hears “If you’re not on the Internet, you’re not at the races.” The sudden mention of the Internet in a story that started some seventy years before is a jarring reminder of the impersonality of history, and the relentlessness of its march.
Some reviews have found this book depressing, sad, or pessimistic. All is not sweetness and light in the lives of the Gaults, but Trevor injects the comforts of consolation and possible salvation through meaningful human relationships. Compared with the work of John McGahern whose work is downright bleak, Trevor doesn’t see the vagaries as time as wholly malevolent. As Lucy later realized, “What happens simply did.” This novel is superior in both the expansiveness of its themes – of love, sin, regret, meditation on history, and the possibilities of reconciliation – and the tight, sharp elegance of Trevor’s prose. Above all, as a first-time reader of his work, I was struck by the poignancy that never devolved into mawkish sentimentality, and the honesty that never lowered itself to bare confession.
By the time I was halfway done with “The Story of Lucy Gault,” I was already enjoying it so much I had already ordered another William Trevor novel. Trevor has also published about as many volumes of short stories as novels, which may very well tempt me out of my continued disinterest in the form. If they are anywhere near as beautifully done as “The Story of Lucy Gault,” they will be nothing short of endlessly rewarding.
This is a wonderful, evocative novel tracing the life of the Gault family beginning during The Troubles in the twenties. Fearing reprisals against Irish nationalists and a previous attempt to burn down their family estate, Lahardane, the Captain Everard Gault and his wife Helene consider fleeing for the Continent. Lucy, their daughter, overhears them talking about moving, but wants to do anything but move from her home on the Irish seaside, the only place she has ever known. In an act of lapsarian rebellion, Lucy runs off into the woods abutting Lahardane just as the Gaults are getting ready to leave, and they end up having to leave without her. Later, the servants (a husband and wife named Henry and Bridget) that are left behind to tend the house stumble on Lucy, and decide to stay behind and raise her there.
She leads a reclusive life, socialized by only an old local canon, a solicitor charged with looking after the house – a displaced child in a world of adults - and the library of books her parents left behind. She meets and is dutifully courted by a young, earnest boy named Ralph who has been invited to be the tutor of a couple of local boys, and while she very much returns his affection, her sense of abandonment lingers, and whenever Ralph shows his romantic interest, she coolly refuses him. He leaves at the end of the summer, and much later Lucy sees in the newspaper that he has married another woman.
Very occasionally, we get flits of the life that Everard and Helene are leading in Europe. Her heart is understandably broken, but she can’t stand of returning to Lahardane even though Lucy is still there. She dies of influenza before she can ever see her daughter again. However, as an old man Captain Gault eventually makes his way back to Lahardane to see Henry, Bridget, and Lucy. While the servants understandably expect Lucy to be thrilled with his return, her relationship with him seems just as inadequate as her relationship with Ralph. Long silences and short, terse replies from Lucy dominate their conversations, even as her father tries to engage her meaningfully, and we immediately know that this is not the silence of rejection, but rather one of a young girl who was forced into an exile all her own, though not a physical one. While he is at Lahardane, one of the boys, named Horahan, who tried to burn down the estate decades earlier shows up and tells of his part in the attempted arson, and he expressed his deep, heart-felt anguish and regret at what he has done. One night, Captain Gault quietly passes away in his sleep.
In her later years, she visits Horahan in an asylum where he has been driven to the verge of madness from his guilt, comforting and talking to him. It is finally in Horahan, who has riven the Gault family into pieces, whom Lucy finally finds her redemption. The end of the final sees Lucy passing the days as an elderly woman. On the radio, she hears “If you’re not on the Internet, you’re not at the races.” The sudden mention of the Internet in a story that started some seventy years before is a jarring reminder of the impersonality of history, and the relentlessness of its march.
Some reviews have found this book depressing, sad, or pessimistic. All is not sweetness and light in the lives of the Gaults, but Trevor injects the comforts of consolation and possible salvation through meaningful human relationships. Compared with the work of John McGahern whose work is downright bleak, Trevor doesn’t see the vagaries as time as wholly malevolent. As Lucy later realized, “What happens simply did.” This novel is superior in both the expansiveness of its themes – of love, sin, regret, meditation on history, and the possibilities of reconciliation – and the tight, sharp elegance of Trevor’s prose. Above all, as a first-time reader of his work, I was struck by the poignancy that never devolved into mawkish sentimentality, and the honesty that never lowered itself to bare confession.
By the time I was halfway done with “The Story of Lucy Gault,” I was already enjoying it so much I had already ordered another William Trevor novel. Trevor has also published about as many volumes of short stories as novels, which may very well tempt me out of my continued disinterest in the form. If they are anywhere near as beautifully done as “The Story of Lucy Gault,” they will be nothing short of endlessly rewarding.
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