| Title | : | A Bit on the Side |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0143035916 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780143035916 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 |
| Publication | : | First published September 23, 2004 |
A Bit on the Side Reviews
-
Twelve short stories; all good and one masterpiece, the title story kept till the end. “Something was different this morning; on the walk from Chiltern Street she had sensed, for an instant only, that their love affair was not as it had been yesterday.”
In the blurbs, one from the New Yorker, in which Trevor published most of these stories over the years, one critic said “Trevor is probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language.” Well, Trevor is gone now, but he’s certainly excellent as a short story writer and as a novelist.
As with his novels, many of the subjects are lonely people, and almost all are leading drab, confined, constrained lives. In one titled “Solitude,” we learn how a young girl became a friendless old lady, living in hotels across Europe, her only acquaintances maids, cooks, bar tenders and bell hops.
In “On the Streets,” a friendless divorced man stalks his former wife. (Married five months – was that a mistake?). He’s a waiter, fixated on and obsessed by a single incident at work for which he was criticized a long time ago.
In “The Dancing-Master’s Music,” a maid at an inn spends her whole life (from age 14 to retirement) working at the inn and reflecting back on a single musical performance. (I’m reminded of another Trevor character, a young man in Silence of the Garden, who goes to see a traveling knife-throwing act as a boy and that seems to end up being the highlight of his life.)
In “Graillis’s Legacy,” a widower, a small town librarian, rejects a substantial inheritance as inappropriate, coming from a woman, a former library patron he knew. It’s as if he worries that it might offend --- who? His dead wife?
Understatement is a strength of Trevor’s prose as in this passage about the village priest from “Justina’s Priest.” “He had seen his congregations fall off and struggled against the feeling that he’d been deserted. Confusion spread from the mores of the times into the Church itself; in combating it, he prayed for guidance but was not heard.” He speaks of a young woman wearing a shirt “with an indecency on it.” (The shirt said “F--- Me.”) In this story the priest intervenes with a young, mentally deficient woman’s family to warn them that she might run off to Dublin with the girl wearing the T-shirt.
A few stories involve couples and married people. (Happily? Of course not, where would the story be?) In “Big Bucks,” a young woman is engaged to a man who goes to America and they plan that she will follow him. Is she in love with him or with a dream of the distant continent?
In “Sitting with the Dead,” the middle-aged Geraghty sisters arrive at the homes of the dead and dying (whether they know you or not). One woman, a widow since the night before, reveals to them a lot more than she intended. Young people would say TMI – too much information!
Great stories!
Irish village from
sites.nd.edu/oblation
Photo of the author from avondhupress.ie -
3.5 Although this author is rather new to me, there is something that attracts in his writing. He seems to have such a firm grasp of time and place, setting detailed scenes and situations. In his portrayal of people, he treats them with both tenderness and respect. In these short stories, the connecting thread seems to be loss, whether of self, a friend, a way of life, even faith.
The first story, Sitting with the dead, is probably the strongest and the desolation and melancholy of this woman, who has now lost her husband is stirring. Yet, as we find out, she lost something much more valuable long ago. The story that has stayed with me though is called, Justina's Priest, a young woman, of lower intelligence who is living with her elder sister, her one and only friend having moved away. She helps out the local priest by caring for the church and he is used to seeing her there. He is having a crisis of faith, wondering what his, life means, when Justina receives a letter from her friend. How this scenario plays out is the story and for me a memorable one.
Nice, pleasant stories, meaningful showing a wonderful grasp of people and their varied circumstances. -
“My mother had died. And my father would die, too. And Charles, too. And I would eventually die, as well, and who would be left to tell the story?”
William Trevor is certainly one of the greatest writers of short stories in the English language. He has to be mentioned in the same sentence as James Joyce, whose Dubliners is one of the great collections ever, and which Trevor acknowledges some debt. Chekhov is another master Trevor admires, and he is a writer in the Chekhovian tradition, telling quiet, understated of ordinary, often marginalized people. Maybe we can think of other writers we also admire like him: Edna O’Brien, Alice Munro? I have read several of his individual stories, and only three or four of his books, but I listened to this, his tenth collection of stories, as I awaited his Selected Stories, which I will now slow read over the next 2-3 months.
A Bit on The Side is a collection of twelve short stories; all beautifully done, with two or three masterpieces.
Here’s the opening of the title story: “Something was different this morning; on the walk from Chiltern Street she had sensed, for an instant only, that their love affair was not as it had been yesterday.”
These are quiet, subtle stories, of quiet people:
Walking home, a young woman is “grateful for the moonlight.”
Two women are “united as friends in their childlessness, wedded in the depth of their sadness.”
In “The Dancing-Master’s Music,” a maid at an inn spends her whole life recalling a single musical performance as the highlight of her life.
Trevor has deep and understated sympathy for his characters, as in the opening story, "Sitting with the Dead,” where a woman, after more than twenty years of an abusive and very private marriage, finds him dead. Two elderly sisters in this small Irish village come to pay their respects, to “sit with the dead,” though most people avoided this couple. The woman so needs comfort, and they are able to provide a very small measure of it, never having met her.
There are people who have never said what they wanted to say, "because there was too little to explain, not too much."
A few of the stories deal with adultery, though there’s so much surprising grace and kindness, not bitterness and rancor. Forgiveness! In the title piece, Trevor writes simply of two middle-aged lovers, both married to others, though she is getting a divorce, in London. The affair is conducted with reserve and dignity, though he feels guilty, feeling he is ruining her life. She insists she is happy, doesn’t mind that others see her as his “bit on the side.” Sad, and understated, and powerful.
Humility and compassion in the best of Trevor’s stories make them so moving. -
Can a writer be both clinical and sympathetic toward his characters? I think he can and I believe Trevor has done both in this collection.
I've read other stories by Trevor that I've liked more, but I still liked this collection quite a bit. After finishing a story, I'd page back to see how he employs his craft, such deceptively simple details leading toward a cohesive whole.
I especially enjoyed the stories that alternated between two characters' viewpoints: "An Evening Out," "On the Streets" and the title story, though what the 'narrator-author' sees at the end of it is what's the most poignant. But I was also impressed with "Solitude," which is told by an elderly woman whose life is defined by an incident from her childhood.
Actually, as I write this and look back at the titles, I can find something in each that touched me. For the reader, perhaps nothing momentous happens in most of these stories, but to the characters, what is being relayed are those moments that determine the course of a life. -
I have not read a short story collection for a long time. I always felt they were too dark and troubling. However, due to many great reviews of various collections, I thought I'd give them another try. Since I have wanted to read something by Trevor, when I saw this collection I thought why not kill two birds with one stone.
The twelve stories in this collection are greatly varied but all very engaging. I did not find them necessarily dark, but definitely melancholy. It is to Trevor's credit that in such a few pages his characters are so well developed.
I am now a convert. More of his collections are in my reading future as well as collections by others. Maybe I'll try the Dubliners next. -
The third of my recent batch of library books is my first of the short story collections, though I have read 7 (or 8 if you count Two Lives as 2) of his novels and novellas. Having read the novels, most of the stylistic traits are familiar, and it is an enjoyable read full of quirky characters and tragicomic situations, but some of the stories are already fading from my memory less than a week after finishing the book.
-
How some authors can express so much in just a few words I will never cease wondering. How they have that ability to make the story on the page speak to you about your own, without it really having any similarities with it, will never cease making me stand in awe of those authors! I just love William Trevor’s style because his glimpses of people’s lives always manage to do this, “to speak to me”.
A man refusing an inheritance from an ex-lover because of being afraid of what the world would say reminisces about how the lover was the only person he felt he could connect with. Two people having a blind date realize that their expectations are ill-matched, but they deal with the date honorably while they face their past regrets quietly. A girl feels guilty for having gossiped about the cuckolded man who had tutored her. An accountant tells his lover his reasons for ending their love affair in spite of the fact that he loves her. A girl realizes that she had been in love with the future she imagined with her lover, not with the man himself. Trevor’s vignettes are sometimes really unexpected, but they still leave a print on you no matter how bizarre the stories seem.
A feeling of regret permeates the whole volume, but also one of quiet acceptance. And also, every single story has a conclusion that really touched me one way or another and even though some of them might have been weaker than others (like in any volume of short stories), I choose to rate this book with a five for the overall feeling that kept lingering over me after having finished the majority of them.
****“She wondered if in his life, too, there had been a mistake that threw a shadow, if that was why he was looking around for someone to fill a gap he had never become used to.”
*“It would not have seemed unusual to speak about his marriage, about love’s transformation within it, about his grief when it was no longer there, about the moments and occasions it had since become.”
*“The silence was different when the music stopped, as if the music had changed it.”
-
I apologise to anyone who is a William Trevor fan profusely! But maybe I wasn't in the right mood for his short stories. I know he is very popular and many people rave about how beautiful and thought-provoking his stories are, but I just found my mind wandering by the time I got just over half way. I just found them too slow. This isn't in any way a criticism on William Trevor - I can see why his writing is so revered, I think it was more that I wasn't in the right frame of mind to read the stories, and instead of stopping, I ploughed on ahead which then gave the impression of being forced to continue reading and was therefore not as enjoyable. I am not put off his writing however, and might decide to pick up one of his novels at a later date - maybe the short stories weren't for me.
-
The voice is still Trevor, a voice I love and one that soothes me; yet these pieces were surprisingly uneven or incomplete. Some sounded re-used. I loved, though, the first story, Sitting with the Dead, about two sisters who come visit when there's a death in the family. They make the tea, offer banalities, and the recent widow opens up.
-
This was my first encounter with the author. I was stunned by his mastery of the short story form. I enjoyed every story in the collection and I have a feeling I will be reading everything he wrote sooner or later. Now here’s someone who just might deserve the title of honorary Russian.
-
I started to read William Trevor’s books in the late 1990s and consider him as one of my favorite authors. His fiction and short stories are equally good. I joined GoodReads about 2 months ago and wanted to start to build up my library/books read here, since I do enjoy reading.
I have the UK hardcover edition. A blurb from the back of the dust wrapper: Elegiac. Totally engrossing. Trevor is a master weaver of stories.
Well put!
Every time a short story by William Trevor would come out in the New Yorker I would save that version. I must have a ton of short stories of Trevor's via that medium. :) -
I find that I must stop after each of William Trevor’s short stories; take a little time to think about what happened. They deserve that. I reflect on what happened and my reaction to it. I try to solidify the characters and the plot in my memory. I find I do not want to let the story slip away; do not want to lose it. I love that he can make me feel that way.
In the first story in A Bit on the Side, Sitting with the Dead, Emily’s husband of 23 years lies in an upstairs bedroom waiting for the undertaker’s arrival. Two sisters that Emily has heard of but does not know arrive to share her grief, and instead she shares her life, and her regrets: choices she has made and the implications.
While some of the stories in this collection stand out from the others, they were all worthy of that pause for reflection at the end.
-
‘A person’s life isn’t orderly… it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.’
How to review a collection of short stories when most readers will inevitably prefer one over another because the idea of an anthology generally implies diversity of topics and characters, and therefore some narratives will appeal more than others? Generally, that it the case for me and even in A Bit On The Side, there are some stories that linger more than others. However, overall, this is a fabulous collection of stories, perfect for compelling and satisfying reads and has made me want to reach out for many of the author’s other short story collections and novels.
The majority of these twelve stories drew me in because firstly the character’s situation, background or moral conundrum was realistically and sensitively portrayed and secondly because Trevor made me care what happens to the main protagonist. In each story he built a picture that was like a window looking into a specific scene of Irish life.
The one theme that stood out in most of these stories was the effects of loneliness and loss on a person: a widow confides in two Christian women about her disappointing marriage; a girl misses her sister, left behind to live with her bitter aunt; a middle-aged priest is dismayed by the slow death of his parish and the man and woman meeting through a dating agency with very different intentions find themselves in an awkward situation are just a few examples for the vast landscape of loneliness and misunderstandings that can occur in people’s lives and that Trevor brings to life effectively in this anthology.
The author’s precise and beautifully layered style is captivating and I often found myself eagerly turning the pages to find out what would happen next. The reader is a quiet bystander, looking in on rural Irish life, the many remnants of the Catholic Church’s influence and lingering effects passed on through previous generations and also the perseverance of its inhabitants to find hope and a new connection to other people or find a new way to determine their future. It is by no means a sad read though because every one of the well-drawn characters do their best to move on from grief, loss or regrets and how they do that is worth the read.
“I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” Samuel Beckett
The Book in three words: intimate, poignant and compelling -
Some real gems here — not least the title story
-
not the best Trevor collection: a couple of stories seemed tired, almost like offcuts. However there were some just great, some that grew on me, and some standard Trevor (ie engaging, compassionate, observant, true). This was published in 2004, they could all have been written 20 years earlier (apart from an odd detail here and there: Pret a Manger in one, for example).
-
9/10
-
Reading William Trevor is like coming back home to a warm fire and a pair of comfy slippers. He is a gifted story teller, especially of short stories; less is more. He crafts his characters, both phsyically and psychologically, and their emotions, using the fewest number of words possible. He moves easily from Ireland to England, but his turns of phrase and use of idioms and vernacular leave the reader in no doubt where each story is set. In stories like 'Justina's Priest' he has no need to explain that she is backward; he has already made that clear to the reader without needing to spell it out. You find yourself under the skins of many of the characters, sometimes they arouse sympathy, sometimes annoyance and sometimes just pity. But the effect, as with many of his other stories, both short and long, is of a modern day Chekhov. You experience an ache and a longing for what has been missed or what could have been avoided.
-
Vignettes of life.
-
Wow. I can't even begin to describe how thoroughly I enjoyed William Trevor's story collection A Bit on the Side. Trevor's prose is simply beautiful, and impeccably crafted. There's no clever wordplay here, no dizzying metaphors or whipsaw plot twists, no implausibly witty characters. Just everyday people living quiet, modest, lonely and often regretful lives in an Ireland of the modern era but which could easily have been fifty or a hundred years ago. The settings are vividly drawn--pubs which are empty in the afternoon but for the lonely seeking refuge; manor houses long since past their prime, their grounds and their inhabitants' way of life slowly drifting away; destitute farmhouses and those fighting to survive within them.
My favorite story here is "Graillis' Legacy" in which a small-town librarian and widower is faced with an inheritance which has been bequeathed to him by a woman he once knew, back when his wife was still alive. The woman moved away years ago, and few people in town probably even remember her, but he wants to refuse the inheritance none the less, merely out of propriety, fearing what others might think, what they would assume to be the ill-gotten fruits of an illicit affair. He goes so far as to consult an attorney, or solicitor, to weigh his options.He was bewildered by the resurrection of a guilt that long ago had softened away to nothing. In that other time no pain had been caused, no hurt; he had managed the distortions that created falsity, the lies of silence; what he had been forgiven for was not seeming to be himself for a while. A crudity still remained in the solicitor's reading of the loose ends that were still there; the wronged wife haunting restlessly from her grave, the older woman claiming from hers the lover who had slipped away from her.
Despite the writer's use of the word "lover", it's not clear if a sexual relationship ever existed between Graillis and the older woman. (Trevor leaves it left unsaid, a lovely habit of his which keeps the reader highly involved in his stories.) Instead, their relationship appeared to be platonic, with the two likely sharing no more than a love of books and conversation, indulged over coffee and cigarettes in the drawing-room of her decaying mansion.He stubbed out his second cigarette. He never smoked at home, continuing not to after he'd found himself alone there, and smoking was forbidden in the branch library, a restriction he insisted upon himself. But in the drawing-room he had sat in so often in the autumn of 1979 and the winter and spring that followed it, a friendship had developed over cigarettes, touches of lipstick on the cork tips that had accumulated in the ashtray with the goldfinch on it. That settled in his thoughts, still as a photograph, arrested with a clarity that today felt cruel.
Usually when I finish a story collection and look back at the table of contents, I have to wrack my brain while looking at some of the titles, trying to think of what happened in each story. This was not the case with Trevor's book: each story immediately came to mind upon reading the corresponding title, standing out distinctly and unmistakably.
A Bit on the Side is a wonderful and richly written collection of stories. I give it my highest and unreserved recommendation.
-
I love the subtlety in Trevor's writing. These stories are delicate, forming a doorway into moments when the main characters are at their most human.
This collection was recommended to me in particular for the child character portrayal in "Solitude." Trevor's technique in the child perspective is interesting. I like how when the narrator is a child all you get is matter of fact observations and recitation of judgments spouted by the adult characters, even when the main turning point of the story occurs. Then, the character just shifts to being older and Trevor changes how the perspective is conveyed, giving us the narrator's own judgments. Trevor's technique works marvelously. -
An interesting and varied collection, mostly focussed on the different types of love and relationships between individuals (with the Dancing Master's Music a notable exception to that rule) and highlighting the special and everyday relatable aspects of those relationships. Expertly handled and drawn "just right" in each instance.
-
A short story collection, so hard to sum up! Mostly set in Ireland in various historical periods, the stories are all well-crafted and self-contained. Most are driven entirely by character -- no plot surprises here -- and tend towards a darker view of the world.
-
http://bettie.booklikes.com/blog -
Very good collection, but as usual all stories sad.
-
I've been going back and forth between these stories by William Trevor and a collection by Richard Bausch called Walking in the Weather of the World. They are both wonderful, and Richard Bausch's fantastic title for his collection could equally serve for Trevor's title. Both books detail the lives of people who are hurting: heartbroken, physically broken, financially undone, or spiritually barren. Yet both have moments of lust, love, hopefulness, and generosity. I guess the point is that these, and the possibility of lust or love or hope or kindness make the hurt what it is. An absence. It's rare I've read two short story collections in tandem, and rarer still that I saw that they carried the same theme at their heart. William Trevor and Richard Bausch, I hope you each read each other's collections. Trevor write with thicker language. I'm not sure quite what I mean, but the Irish seem to write with more consonants. There's not quite so much air in the language. As though those rows of houses in the small towns, I think of Foxford or Sligo, has crowded the language as well as the houses. Bausch's stories often have more dramatic turns, but the careful attention to characters breathes the same kind of life into his stories. I utterly believe these people exist.
Trevor's stories have the Irish awareness of death, the loss of love, the insistence of religion. In one story, the dilemma of a young girl named Justina is told almost entirely through the confessions she makes to Father Clohessy. Terrified that she will leave something out of her confession, she rattles on and on, essentially letting him in on her wondering if she should leave her nagging sister and the town. The pries talks to Justina's sister...oh the nosiness of the Irish. Father Clohessy knows that the girl is innocence itself. He tells her sister because of that innocence; he knows how vulnerable she is. So religion is more present in these stories, but the human heart, the desire to be loving to others, and the ache to take care of one's own precious heart are so often in conflict. These are stories to return to...so much about how to be human, and how to live with it when we fall short of what that means to us.
Each story is like this, filled to the brim with human kindness and cruelty and interference and certainty that "someone" knows what's good for someone else. There is so much life in these stories...Just like Bausch's book. All the weather of the world.
