In Two Lives William Trevor offers two stories
– Reading Turgenev and My House In Umbria. They are not mere stories, however,
and read like substantial novellas. Both have women as central characters.
Reading Turgenev features Mary Louise Dallon, an Irish Protestant whose parents
support her decision to marry, though on the surface at least the match may be
less than perfect. In My House In Umbria someone who claims to be called Emily
Delahunty relates her chequered personal history against a backdrop of wholly
unpredicted events that change the lives of all she invites to her house. In
both stories, William Trevor examines a gap that might exist between reality
lived, reality recalled and reality imagined. Writers create apparently
fictitious worlds which, when embraced by characters who themselves are also
fictitious, approach desired realities much closer than reality, itself.
Mary Louise Dallon is a young woman in an
almost frighteningly normal Irish Protestant household. There are visits to the
cinema and suitors of various ages and types, and work which will always be
local and probably predictable. Predictable, that is, until someone does
something rather unexpected. Mary Louise Dallon does do the unexpected. Reading
Turgenev thus examines the consequences, predictable and otherwise, of this
departure from the expected norm. And, of course, the Turgenev that gets read
is itself fiction. But, for Mary Louise its imagined world becomes perhaps more
important than the strange reality that surrounds her. People who share her
life ignore the reality or, when it does not suit their bias, they recreate it
almost as their own fiction. The effect on Mary Louise is devastating, or
perhaps the consequences were inevitable, products of her own
mis-interpretations or mis-understanding of reality. As a result, Reading
Turgenev becomes an almost viscerally moving experience, where real violence is
done to the central character without a finger ever being raised in threat.
It-s all done with words. And eventually, those words are themselves a fiction.
My House In Umbria features a writer who is
known as Emily Delahunty. The name might be unlikely. Perhaps much of what she
relates about herself is of the same ilk. She has been here and there – Idaho,
Africa, Umbria, English towns. She has suffered parental confusion and probably
abuse, has been exploited in the USA and has been in business in Africa. But
then, she is also a creator of romantic, perhaps sentimental fiction. An apparently random event brings about
equally chance encounters when people who seem to need one another congregate
in Emily’s house in Umbria. Throughout she confuses real events with those of
her own fiction. There is no denying reality, but this can also be created. She
is clearly presenting to others her own version of reality that is far from the
frame of a confident older woman in which she casts herself. Which version of
reality will provoke belief?
Throughout William Trevor’s book the real joy
is the author’s resplendent prose. It
surprises. It decorates, it twists, turns and celebrates. These fictional
characters become completely real. Utterly credible, despite their propensity
to live in imagined worlds. The overall concept is stunning. The detail is
devilish, the consequences of these fictions apparently real.
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