The Farmer Takes a Wife

Media: Audio
Read by: Jim Norton
Length: 5 hours 12 minutes

It’s summer in a small town in Ireland. There’s a chance meeting between a local lass and a young man on a bike. We know that these two, Ella and Florian have clicked. And then?

William Trevor builds up the cast chapter by chapter. We learn about the players, the farmer, the guesthouse proprietor and her husband, the salesman, the ex-librarian who has lost his mind. We learn about the town’s recent history and scandals. The farmer accidentally killed his first wife and child; the local cinema burned down, the guesthouse proprietor was forced by her father to have an abortion.

There are more chance encounters between Ella and Florian. These are fleeting until, amongst the ruins of an old manor house that is overrun with the sweet peas, peonies and lavender, a love blossoms.

Sounds clichéd at best, at worst a cheap Victorian “penny dreadful”. But it’s not. Trevor manages to weave a tale that brings to mind Thomas Hardy rather than Mills and Boon. Scenes are described in minute detail, so we can see every movement of the characters as they interact with each other and go about their daily tasks. From the farmer repairing a tyre tube to Ella folding her clothes ready for the next day, mundane details bring to life a world we are experiencing as we read on. A Vermeer in words.

I tottered between a 3.5 and a 4 for rating, as the book is slight in content and in length. Not an important book. Not a seminal Trevor work, so perhaps a 3.5? I gave it a 4. Love and Summer epitomizes everything that is exquisite about William Trevor’s books. He brings to life moments in time and builds up a world that we can enter, lavender and all. ( )

In a small Irish town in the 1960s/70s, Ellie Dillahan and Florian Kilderry meet. Ellie is an orphan who was raised by nuns, sent out to be a housekeeper when she came of age, and ends up marrying the man she was keeping house for. Her husband has a tragic past, having lost his wife and child in a gruesome accident. Ellie is shy and quiet and simple. Florian Kilderry is selling his parents' house, who have both died, and trying to get over a lost love. Over a summer, the two begin spending time together and they grow close, complicated by Ellie's marriage and Florian's imminent departure.

[[William Trevor]] is a master at telling a reader what is happening without ever saying it. This book is incredibly subtle - almost nothing is said straight out, but somehow everything is clear. Using only tiny bits of dialogue and tiny moments of interior thought, Ellie, her husband, and Florian all become complete characters. I'm not sure how he did it.

I will say it's a little disorienting to read a book like this. There isn't a lot of description, isn't a lot of dialogue, isn't a lot of characters' thoughts. What is there? It's hard to describe how Trevor gets the plot across to the reader. All I know is I really liked it. ( )

Good story of Tipperary in perhaps the 1960s. Love story, almost tragedy but hints that life was able to continue. Trevor is a master of the details of daily life which bring you into the society of the time.

A whole novel about an unfulfilled dalliance between two dull characters and extraneous secondary characters and descriptions. I'm a fan of Trevor's short stories, so i was surprised to find this an unmitigated bore. Fortunately it's brief. ( )

The setting for this understated novel is Rathmoye, a small town in the south of Ireland in the middle of the 20th century. Mrs Connulty, whose family owns most of the buildings in town has died, and the townspeople come out to honor her. However, a young visitor, Florian Kilderry, also makes an appearance in the town, as he is there to take photographs of a theatre owned by the Connultys that burned down years ago. He catches the eye of Miss Connulty, the daughter of the deceased matriarch, and he has a brief but electric interaction with Ellie Dillahan, a former orphan who is now married to a farmer whose first wife and young child died in a tragic accident that he was partially responsible for.

The Dillahan's marriage is a convenient but loveless one for Ellie, as her husband is good to her, but does not inspire her. She falls passionately in love with Florian, who lives in a neighboring town. He is a directionless underachiever, and is in the process of selling his late parents' home, to move to "Scandinavia" to make a new life for himself.

The relationship between Ellie and Florian deepens, and the single, middle-aged Miss Connulty is the only one who perceives the danger of this illicit relationship, as it resembles a tragic experience that she had a young woman. As the date of Florian's departure nears, Ellie falls more deeply in love with him, while realizing that she does not love her husband.

For me, Love and Summer was a beautifully written, quiet novel of love and repression in a small town. The intentions and portrayal of two key characters were unclear to me, which made this an incompletely satisfying, though still very enjoyable, read ( )