A review by bucket
After Rain by William Trevor
5.0
My favorite story is Child's Play, about two children who become step siblings living together with their two parents who had an adulterous affair. They come to terms and have fun together acting out the steps that led to this momentous change in their lives.
I also thoroughly enjoyed After Rain, about a woman who spends time in a childhood vacation spot when her love affair ends, The Piano Tuner's Wives, about the two women who marry the same man decades apart, and A Day, about a woman who drinks to numb the sorrow she feels about her cheating husband and inability to bear children.
Each of the stories in this collection is beautiful, in its own quiet and melancholy way. For the most part, tragedies are small and everyday and relationships stay together despite jealousies, affairs, desperations, and love lost. The people in these stories mostly suffer quietly in order to keep their lives from falling apart and the few who speak out and take risks are punished by their own families. As a whole, the stories are a lesson about complacency and how hiding your feelings keeps things from falling apart, but it doesn't bring happiness.
Themes: love, marriage, jealousy, family relationships, melancholy, indifference, silence, fate and its unchangeabililty
I also thoroughly enjoyed After Rain, about a woman who spends time in a childhood vacation spot when her love affair ends, The Piano Tuner's Wives, about the two women who marry the same man decades apart, and A Day, about a woman who drinks to numb the sorrow she feels about her cheating husband and inability to bear children.
Each of the stories in this collection is beautiful, in its own quiet and melancholy way. For the most part, tragedies are small and everyday and relationships stay together despite jealousies, affairs, desperations, and love lost. The people in these stories mostly suffer quietly in order to keep their lives from falling apart and the few who speak out and take risks are punished by their own families. As a whole, the stories are a lesson about complacency and how hiding your feelings keeps things from falling apart, but it doesn't bring happiness.
Themes: love, marriage, jealousy, family relationships, melancholy, indifference, silence, fate and its unchangeabililty