The sort of book that turns genre mid-way through. The expectation is for an Irish runaway's coming of age saga but the story turns into something far darker. The drama and tension is kept up throughout the book with no lapse in the quality of the writing. I would recommend it highly. William Trevor is an accomplished handler of plot, but does not skimp on characterisation and setting. Twitch those lace curtains, just what is going on next door? ( )

Sad, but not depressing... tragic but not hopeless. ( )

This is a very well-written short novel by an author I am coming to really admire. His prose is simple but incredibly evocative. In this case, the novel is dripping with dread, tension, macarbe. Mr. Hilditch really made my skin crawl and I could totally see him with those small hands and fussy little glasses in my mind's eye. Yikes. . . Amazingly enough, Trevor does succeed in generating pathos for the man. His use of dreams and fragments of memory woven throughout the narrative paint spot-on haunting snapshots of Hr. Hilditch's childhood, Felicia and Johnny, and the girls of Memory Lane. Creepy, with a capital C.

I didn't like this quite as much as 'The Story of Lucy Gault,' I wanted to know Felicia a bit better, and I almost wished her fate was left a little more ambiguous. But I shouldn't quibble with an artist's vision. For clearly, Trevor's prose is artistry.

Another excellent piece of fiction; I will definately read more by this author -- it seems he should maybe win some awards as time goes by -- his writing is that good. ( )

Trevor, long admired for his trenchant stories and novels, his subtle humor and broad compassion, retains all those virtues in his deeply absorbing new novel and adds a degree of narrative tension he has not shown before. Felicia is a poor, plain, rather simple Irish girl made pregnant by the first boy to bed her, who then promptly disappears to England, leaving no address. When she abandons her taciturn family to look for him, her only thought is to be reunited with a lover. But she meets portly, self-delighted Mr. Hilditch, catering manager at a factory in the grimy English Midlands, who shows her unexpected kindness, even helps arrange an abortion for her; after all, he's been a good friend to so many other lost girls, hasn't he? Wary of him at first, then resigned, finally increasingly anxious as she wonders what became of his other friends, Felicia picks her numb way among psychological minefields. What happens to her and to Mr. Hilditch, in the brilliantly evoked setting of dank cafes and pubs, homeless wanderers, revivalists and bus trips to stately homes, is the stuff of nightmare; not cynically created, but one born of deep understanding and piercing truth. This is a thriller lifted to the level of high art, and it should win Trevor many new admirers. ( )

wasn't that impressed ( )