Where to start with William Trevor

Irish novelist, 1928–2016. Won the Costa Novel Award in 1976, 1983 and 1994.

Best William Trevor book to start with: The Children of Dynmouth (1976), on 2 of the 17 lists it could have made.

The Children of Dynmouth is a good first Trevor. It won the Costa Novel Award in 1976 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year. It is short and set in a small English seaside town, where a teenage boy turns up uninvited in other people’s lives and reveals more than they would like. It is a quick read, and Trevor’s calm, exact style is clear from the first page.

The Story of Lucy Gault, shortlisted for the Booker and the Costa in 2002, and Fools of Fortune, which won the Costa in 1983, are both Irish stories about a family and a house, spanning many years. Pick one of them next. Felicia’s Journey won the Costa in 1994 and follows a young Irish woman who travels to England to find her lover and meets a stranger on the way. It is the most suspenseful of the six.

Mrs. Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel, shortlisted for the Booker in 1970, is the earliest on the index, and Reading Turgenev, shortlisted in 1991, is a quiet novella set in Ireland. Read both once you have enjoyed two of the others.