A Bit on the Side
by William Trevor
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Book Summary Information
Author: William TrevorEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-27
ISBN: 0143035916
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of A Bit on the Side
Book Review: Strangely Compelling
Summary: 4 Stars
I am not a William Trevor aficionado, but I found these 12 stories spare, unique and strangely compelling. Trevor manages to draw you into the needs and wants of odd characters in difficult moments. His style is cool and nearly dispassionate--until you realize he is asking us to consider these lives with affection and appreciation. Whether it's first person ("Solitude") or third ("Big Bucks"), the writing doesn't flash or jump out at you, but there is a frankness to the images and the descriptions that rivets you to the spot. The overall mood is longing, disappointment, of things breaking or being broken, of longings unfulfilled.
In some ways, the stories are relatively easy reading--strong but straightforward vocabulary and plain sentence structures. A few times I found myself having to see what scenes Trevor was trying to do--it's almost so quick and cryptic at times that if you blink you'll miss it. He often starts mid-action. "In the theatre bar they still talked, not hurrying over their drinks although an announcement had warned that the performance would begin in two minutes." That's the first sentence from "An Evening Out," a story about the odd verbal dance between a man and a woman who have been set up by a dating service (a nifty tale of competing desires). We are thrust in the side door with Trevor's characters and given a chance to watch and listen. There's a bit of hand-holding by Trevor, but he's judicious in doling out tidbits of back-story.
I'd recommend starting with "A Bit on the Side," the title story and probably the most straightforward. If you like that, you'll get a flavor for his style. Some of the others are more obtuse. After the title story, I liked "An Evening Out," "Sitting with the Dead" and "Sacred Statues." These are all rich stories, however, told by a powerful writer.
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