Love and Summer - A review

Love and Summer. William Trevor. Novel.

I read this book at a sitting in an airplane. Literally, beginning it as we taxied in Dublin and finishing it halfway along an unscheduled leg to our destination, Barcelona, from Valencia to where we had been diverted because of thunderstorms. In all I was on the plane, in the air and on tarmac, for as long as it would have taken to fly to America.

So I was very glad to have with me what turned out to be a totally engrossing book. I hadn't read William Trevor for many years. It is very nice to know that he hasn't lost his gift for telling stories about people, and especially about them in Ireland.

Love and Summer is set in a Tipperary village, around the end of the 50s I would guess. And I suppose it is because I grew up in a place with the same characteristics that I could identify with every character, each location, and the ethos under which they lived.

It's a kind of Romeo and Juliet story. Ellie and Florian encounter each other while each is at a crossroads in their respective lives, coming from quite different backgrounds. What makes the book hold our attention is a curiosity to see what develops, if anything. Both Ellie and Florian are vulnerable not just to each other, but to the circumstances around them.

Trevor's skill is not just in dealing with main characters, but also the others surrounding them. All are deftly painted, and given enough detail to reflect their positions in the overall narrative. They are all more than just peripherals in the story, although the individual importance of each can take time to show itself.

The mores and morality of a small Irish village in the middle of what is now the last century are skillfully recalled in this book. But not in a heavy way, and in no manner judgemental. And if nothing else, although the pace of life today is quite faster, reading Trevor's latest tale, from a time when the bicycle was the more common mode of personal transport, does leave the reader with the thought that the basics haven't changed at all.

It is a story where sublimated bitterness sometimes hides the sweet. Where charity lurks behind gruffness. Where love might not triumph but humanity definitely will. The tale also shows once again that the author retains a very real affection for the roots wherein he was reared, and is able to depict with equal facility the feelings and fears of both genders and of every age. His skill with language is at least as good as it always was.

At the airport again today I see that the book is close to the top of the fiction best seller lists in Ireland. It deserves to be. And that it is available already in our local library is a credit to that service.

Love and Summer is one I can, and do, recommend without reservation.

Brian Byrne.