- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Viking (17 Aug 2009)
- ISBN-10: 0670918245
- ISBN-13: 978-0670918249
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 216,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Love and Summer
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Product Description
Review
I was totally entranced ... a rare book (Ruth Scurr, The Times )
A fabulously benign book ... a work of sympathetic magic (Sebastian Barry, Guardian )
I can't think of anything I've read recently that has chronicled more accurately the thumping chaos of human hearts or felt more questioning and youthful and alive (Julie Myerson, Financial Times )
A fabulously benign book ... a work of sympathetic magic (Sebastian Barry, Guardian )
I can't think of anything I've read recently that has chronicled more accurately the thumping chaos of human hearts or felt more questioning and youthful and alive (Julie Myerson, Financial Times )
Product Description
It's summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn't go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs Connulty's funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn't know that the Connultys were said to own half the town; and, in any case, he had come to Rathmoye only to see the scorched remains of the cinema. But Mrs Connulty's daughter, liberated at last by the death of her imperious mother, resolves to keep an eye on Florian Kilderry, and it's she who comes to witness the events that follow. A few miles out in the country a farmer called Dillahan lives with the knowledge that he was accidentally responsible for the deaths of his wife and baby. He has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. But she falls in love with Florian and though he plans to leave Ireland, a dangerously reckless attachment develops between them . In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this book in one sitting and was transported into another world. It's beautifully written: the people and places brought alive by the author's evocative prose. it starts slowly as the characters are fleshed out such that they seem real in the reader's mind. Then, gradually, trouble brews and you fear for the characters and what will happen in the end. A book full of love, hate, shame and longing. I've only read one other William Trevor book, Felicia's Journey, and now wonder why I haven't read more as he's a great writer.
A minor point, but important for older readers, the book has an easy to read type-face.
A minor point, but important for older readers, the book has an easy to read type-face.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It's been a long time since I read anything by William Trevor (30 years?) and so I wasn't sure what to expect from this novel. Yes, it was overly long for the subject matter - as another reviewer has suggested, it might have made a more efficient "long short story". Yes, it was terribly nostalgic and very old fashioned, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I liked the intensity of it, the innocence of a long-gone simple rural Ireland (the young wife and her older husband), simple yet at the same time complex with its newly emerging property-based class system replacing - and aping - the system of the British, Anglo-Irish and Protestants. What is known now about clerical abuse and the structures that enabled it to thrive belie the innocence of the time - I wonder if Trevor had this in mind. For some reason it "Love and Summer" reminded me of "Ryan's Daughter" - the repressed sexuality of the young wife, and the tenderness and kindness of the older husband.
The Connulty twins and the parent to whom each was respectively attached represent two sides of the one coin of the allegedly pre-materialism days that people apparently yearn for: the cold mother who invested more in her son and the father who ultimately stood by his daughter in her time of need. The young lover's decaying house and his besotted artistic parents bring to mind Yeats' "romantic Ireland" being "dead and gone, ... with O'Leary in the grave." Romanticism doesn't feed you, despite its many attractions.
I did enjoy this book, but it rightly didn't win the Booker.
The Connulty twins and the parent to whom each was respectively attached represent two sides of the one coin of the allegedly pre-materialism days that people apparently yearn for: the cold mother who invested more in her son and the father who ultimately stood by his daughter in her time of need. The young lover's decaying house and his besotted artistic parents bring to mind Yeats' "romantic Ireland" being "dead and gone, ... with O'Leary in the grave." Romanticism doesn't feed you, despite its many attractions.
I did enjoy this book, but it rightly didn't win the Booker.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Trevor is back on home turf - rural Ireland - with this short, evocative novel. His prose is so lovely and his power as a storyteller undimmed by age. As ever, there are suprises, sub-plots left to the reader to tie up and that faint sense of lurking menace that pervades so much of Trevor's work. Take your time with Love and Summer, because there is so much to enjoy. What a pity he didn't make it onto the Booker short list, but I suppose they cannot award the prize on the strength of an author's huge contribution to English literature over so many years.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Delightful Read
I was prompted to buy this book because of the review I heard on BBC4'S "A Good Read". This slim volume is indeed a good read - a romance without any schmaltz. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs. L. Watson
Love and Summer
Enjoyable, but not as good as I had expected, having heard the reviews on the radio
and in the newspaper. Perhaps William Trevor is not for me.
and in the newspaper. Perhaps William Trevor is not for me.
Published 1 month ago by D. J. Lay
The politics of kindle
What I am surprised about is the fact that this costs more for an electronic version than the physical book itself - which at least I can pass over to my friends. Read more
Published 2 months ago by A. Patricia Hughes
Love and Summer
A very well-written and descriptive tale, where one quickly gets drawn into the life of the town and its carefully crafted characters.
Published 2 months ago by D A H Smith
simply beautiful
A mixture of Under Milk Wood and Ryan's daughter. I couldn't put it down. All the characters are wonderfully entwined in a simple, beautiful love story.
Published 2 months ago by leggere
Slow
This was a book I was looking forward to reading. Having not read any books by William Trevor before, I was anticipating a good read, judging from the reviews. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Avidreader
Love and Summer
Bought the book for book reading group discussion. Beautifully written in such a delicate way. Humour, pathos, misery and happiness all summed up and yet no unnecessary words... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mrs. Charmaine Pearson
Good prose - but I wasn't engaged by the characters or the plot
William Trevor writes very well and three of the ten people in our book group absolutely loved this book. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Bizgen
Dull
A tale about an illicit love affair in a sleepy Irish town one summer in the 1950s.I was somewhat disappointed by this book. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Butterflylady
The deceptive genius of simplicity
An,yone who has read previous novels of William Trevor's such as Felicias Journey or The Story of Lucy Gault or collections of short stories such as A Bit On The Side will need no... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mr. C. W. Livett
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