The story of Lucy Gault starts when Lucy is eight, almost nine in 1921, when her father shoots through the shoulder a possible member of the IRA who has come to burn the 'big house' that the Gault family have lived in for generations. These actions - the possible burning, and the shooting - start a chain of events that change the Gault's lives, and the man who is shot, for ever.

The book is suffused with a feeling of melancholy (in fact like all of Trevor's books that I've read) as well as a kind of dreamy detachment. This time I tried to work out how he achieves it, and I think it has a lot to do with how Trevor uses passive construction of sentences: "The two men on the promenade were watched from far away" for example, and also with a sense of longing, and of time inevitably passing. Anyway, however he does it, it is wonderful.

There are sections in the novel where I was desperate for resolution; willing for things to happen, which of course, when they did were not exactly as I hoped. Near the end there is a passing reference to an old bicycle, and for those that have read The Story of Lucy Gault

Spoiler

did you read this as meaning that Lucy and Ralph do once again meet briefly? I'd be really interested to know what you thought. <\spoiler>

I'm already sad that one day soon, since Trevor died last year, I will have read all of his work.

www.clairefuller.co.uk