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The Story of Lucy Gault (Hardcover)

by William Trevor (Author) "Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one ..." (more)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Viking (29 Aug 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0670913421
  • ISBN-13: 978-0670913428
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 120,291 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #18 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > T > Trevor, William

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Chance is the central theme and malevolent force of William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault. In this haunting novel, suffused with melancholy, Trevor, a masterful chronicler of the sad, lonely and unfulfilled, recounts the tragic life story of a woman buffeted by fate.

The book opens in County Cork in 1921 with the eponymous Lucy as a small girl oblivious to the changes sweeping across Ireland. The Gaults are a Protestant land-owning family: Lucy's father, Captain Everard, was an officer in the British Army and her mother Heliose is English. When three local lads attempt to set fire to their ancestral home Lahardane (a country house in the vein of Elizabeth Bowen's Bowen's Court) Everard shoots and wounds one of the intruders, Horahan. The shot proves to have disastrous and reverberating consequences for the family: consequences that might appear melodramatic if Trevor didn't unfurl them with such subtlety and poise.

Everard and Heloise opt to leave Ireland but just before they are about to depart Lucy runs away. Convinced that she has drowned, the Gaults reluctantly head off into exile. Lucy is discovered alive but attempts to contact her kin fail. As her parents mournfully journey across Europe, Lucy, raised by two faithful servants, whiles away the years reading and waiting for their return. Her isolated existence at Lahardane is finally broken when Ralph, a young teacher, accidentally stumbles upon the house. Slowly, a romance blossoms, although Lucy, plagued by guilt and the ghosts of the past, is simply unable to grasp this chance of happiness. She does eventually find a kind of redemption (kept tantalisingly until the final chapters) but her tale, told with extraordinary beauty, compassion and precision, is ultimately one of endless disappointments. --Travis Elborough



The Guardian, August 31, 2002

'[a] gravely beautiful, subtle and haunting Irish novel'
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Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

22 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting, heartbeaking page-turner., 18 Jul 2003
By Myles na gCopaleen (Hampton Hill, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Story of Lucy Gault (Paperback)
This is a ghost story, but the ghosts are not dead, they are only "playing at being dead".
In Ireland, in the summer of 1921, Anglo-Irish families are caught in the war between the IRA and the British Army and many of their big houses are being put on fire. Captain Gault and his wife Heloise decide to leave Ireland much to the distress of their eight-year-old daughter Lucy. She decides on a plan to force them to stay but her actions have disastrous, unforeseeable consequences.
The plot is so poignant I could hardly bear to read on but I had to find out what happens next.
William Trevor's writing is beautiful and subtle. There isn't a word out of place. The pace of the story is calm and mesmerising, almost dreamlike, but the desire to discover Lucy's fate will keep you reading into the night.
I agreed with every complimentary word of the blurbs on the cover.
This is a sublime novel, much better than Life of Pi which beat it for the Man Booker prize 2002. But life isn't fair as The Story of Lucy Gault epitomizes.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars an Irish classic, 21 Sep 2002
By sarah hill (Hereford, UK) - See all my reviews
It is 1921 in rural Cork. But life in their big old house is anything but tranquil for the Protestant Gault family. In the midst of political turmoil, Captain Gault decides they must leave their house in Lahardane. But 8 year old Lucy has other ideas and makes her own plans. It is Lucy, then, who (rather like Bridget in Ian McEwan's 'Atonement')sets in train a sequence of events with devastating consequences for her family for many years to come. This is classic William Trevor. He writes simply, in an almost understated way, but very memorably, and evocatively. This book combines an intimate portrait of rural Ireland with a brilliant sense of tension, and the vulnerability of us all to the chance events of everyday life.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant book, 19 Sep 2002
This was my first William Trevor book.Though I struggled at the very start of the book once it got going I could not put it down.The story of Lucy is sad but brilliantly told.Trevor has a gift,his writing style breathaking,his descriptions of characters and life remarkable.Though the book covers a long period of time the feeling of a changing world comes across brilliantly.I loved the 'old' Ireland at the start of the book and I feel that the sadness of a lost way of life came accross as well as the lonely and sad existance of Lucy.His characters all have burdens they carry heavily in life bringing home the hard realities that many of us face in our journey through life.
I loved this book for many reasons.It is different to anything I have read and Trevors style is sheer genius.You will follow Lucy through her troubled life and be left to ponder on what could or should have been if this tradgedy had happened in present day.Unmissable read this now !
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A curtailed life
In the years between the two World Wars Ireland seethed with unrest. Rich Protestant houses were burnt out and families fled. Read more
Published 2 months ago by E. Shaw

5.0 out of 5 stars Not quite a classic but nonetheless captivating
I read this six years ago when it first came out and whilst it does not quite have the staying power of a true classic (indeed, it was only reading other reviews that made me... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Aquinas

5.0 out of 5 stars LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION...
This is a beautifully written book, rife with emotion and feeling. It is a book that will keep the reader riveted to its pages until the very last one is turned, so absorbing is... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Lawyeraau

2.0 out of 5 stars Relentlessly depressing
Very readable, but ultimately this book is page after page of depression, sadness and disappointment. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Dr. J. S. E. Sullivan-lyons

3.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary Circumstances Leads To A Very Sad Life
The blurb on the back of the book reads well and the opening few chapters were quite chilling and gripping. Read more
Published 21 months ago by A. Rose

4.0 out of 5 stars Not an easy book to read, but a rewarding one...
The Story of Lucy Gault opens in southern Ireland in 1921. It is a country in torment, a country at war, a country seeking its own destiny. Read more
Published on 22 April 2007 by D. N. Carter

5.0 out of 5 stars LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION...
This is a beautifully written book, rife with emotion and feeling. It is a book that will keep the reader riveted to its pages until the very last one is turned, so absorbing is... Read more
Published on 25 Jun 2005 by Lawyeraau

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, but unbelievable
Having a fascination with the 'big houses' of Ireland and the tensions in the 1920s between the native Irish and the Anglo-Irish ruling classes (something to do with my Historian... Read more
Published on 18 Dec 2003 by www.bibliofemme.com

5.0 out of 5 stars Painful, moving and cathartic - Trevor at his best
I read this on a half-empty overnight plane flight, for most of which I was the only person awake. Not that I wasn't tired, but I simply couldn't stop reading. Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2003 by Gareth Smyth

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully restrained, brilliantly written
The Story of Lucy Gault, is the epitome of brilliant story-telling. It is beautifully restrained with Trevor holding control of his story like no other writer alive today. Read more
Published on 30 Oct 2003 by jasonbennett3

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