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'The Hill Bachelors' by William Trevor

Trevor's short stories are jewels of eloquence

Sunday, November 19, 2000

By Betsy Kline, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

	The Hill Bachelors By William Trevor Viking $22.95

The language is spare, but the feelings are not. The silence fairly screams in the dozen eloquent short stories that make up William Trevor’s latest collection. This distinguished Irish writer (“Felicia’s Journey,” “After Rain,” “Death in Summer”) peers into the depths of the psyche and in modest prose etches in fine detail the shadow of the motivation behind the simplest action -- the whisper of secrets never spoken but understood between two souls.

In “Three People” we meet Sidney, a handyman of simple means, who is drawn to help Vera and her elderly father. The courtship is slow and very subtle; some things can’t be rushed or spoken of. On all three minds is the question of why Sidney years before supplied Vera, then just a pretty stranger, with an alibi to her sister’s murder. Trevor dangles that question mark with chilling effect as the trio deftly sidestep the mystery that brought them together.

In “Le Visiteur,” Trevor once again makes the reader privy to the secret guarded by the characters who carry on a long-term relationship that would shatter if the simple truth were told.

“The Virgin’s Gift” stands as one of the finest of the collection. Michael, the only child of hard-working Irish farmers, is visited by the Blessed Virgin as a young man and accepts his calling to join the monks at a nearby abbey. Years later she visits him again and tells him to leave the fraternity of the abbey and live a hermit’s life in the remotest wilds.

He does so, and, just when he comes to love his solitude, Mary appears a third time to the middle-aged Michael and orders him to rejoin society. Michael is forlorn, weary and not a little bitter at being ordered to and fro, kept wondering at God’s purpose. But he embarks on a sojourn not knowing his destination. He stumbles over the virgin’s gift in a divine accident that will leave tears in the reader’s eyes.

Sadness tinges most of Trevor’s stories, but it is a sadness of hard-won insight. In “Good News,” 9-year-old Bea’s would-be actress mother Iris pushes her into an acting job that frightens and overwhelms her. The only reason she goes through with it is the hope that the job will give her mom an excuse to get back in touch with Bea’s father, who has drifted away.

In the title story, an unmarried son returns to the farm to bury his father. His siblings have their established lives and families, and Paulie feels the pull to uproot his life in the city and be the one to save the family farm from dismantling. Paulie’s mother watches in anguish as her son one by one loses his matrimonial chances. They could sell the farm and be done with it, but Paulie won’t let go as he heeds the unspoken code of the bachelors of the hill, wedded only to the land.

Trevor has a bit of fun in “Death of a Professor.” A prankster manages to trick several newspapers into printing the obituary of Professor Ormston. It’s a cruel joke to have one’s career declared dead before its time, and Ormston’s colleagues gather to gossip and swap catty stories that reveal volumes about their own moribund careers. When Ormston learns of the hoax, which his young wife has hidden from him, he is driven to a pub to sort out his feelings and proceeds to get drunk. The drink loosens memories that in the end buoy rather than sink him.

Each story in “The Hill Bachelors” is a gem, an exquisitely wrought character study, polished in fine language and backlit with a radiant acumen that is astounding to behold.