The Story of Lucy Gault
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | William Trevor |
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| Subtitle | A Novel |
| Publisher | Viking Books |
| Honors | |
| William Trevor is beloved around the world as one of the finest writers today—and with just cause: his new novel is a masterpiece of love and loss, and lives suspended in time.
Lucy Gault is nine when her parents are faced with the agonizing decision to flee Ireland to be safe from the violence that privilege and Lucy’s English mother have brought upon them—or to stay in their home and risk losing it to the threat of arson. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane’s beautiful pastureland, the seashore below pale clay cliffs, and the nameless dog… | |
William Trevor is beloved around the world as one of the finest writers today—and with just cause: his new novel is a masterpiece of love and loss, and lives suspended in time.
Lucy Gault is nine when her parents are faced with the agonizing decision to flee Ireland to be safe from the violence that privilege and Lucy’s English mother have brought upon them—or to stay in their home and risk losing it to the threat of arson.
Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane’s beautiful pastureland, the seashore below pale clay cliffs, and the nameless dog that has become her companion. So she runs away into the nearby woods to convince her parents to stay. Instead, her actions begin the unravelling of her family when they find two bits of her clothing and conclude she has thrown herself into the sea. Now desperate to be rid of the place where their much-loved daughter has died, Captain and Heloise Gault set off to wander restlessly across Europe. In the Lahardane woods, two weeks after the Gaults have gone, the groundskeeper finds the child lying lame and half-dead. He and his wife become Lucy’s life companions as she keeps a 30-year vigil of love and guilt waiting for her parents’ return.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
A difficult novel for any parent to read, William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault recounts the tale of a young girl whose Protestant family is driven from its rural Irish home in 1921. Eight-year-old Lucy is in love with Lahardane: the old house itself, the woods, the nearby beach, the shells and fir cones and sticks that she collected like treasure. The day before her family is scheduled to flee Ireland, leaving the house and furnishings in the care of trusted servants, Lucy runs away. Her parents, finding a scrap of her clothing on the beach, assume the worst. Days later, they leave Lahardane, choosing not to settle in England, as they had planned, but to roam Europe in their grief, leaving no forwarding address. But Lucy has not killed herself; she’s only broken her leg in the woods. Eventually she makes it back to the house to find her parents gone. She spends her childhood waiting to be forgiven for her wicked act, postponing all happiness until she can be reunited with her mother and father. Revealing more of the plot will spoil this lovely novel for its many readers. It is enough to note that Trevor’s characteristic depth and emotional complexity are fully realized here in the watchful reticence of his young heroine and the strange but beautiful way she finds to express her own forgiveness. —Regina Marler
