Felicia's Journey

Felicia is a young and naïve Irish woman. When she becomes pregnant, her father spurns her, and she travels to England to find the man responsible, feeling sure he will “do the right thing.” In England, during her search, she meets Mr. Hilditch, who is portrayed as enigmatic and ominously obsessive. The reader will soon realize he is a master manipulator. Felicia is trusting and easily misled. The narrative shifts between the perspectives of Felicia and Mr. Hilditch, providing insight into their inner worlds.

Themes include isolation, loss of innocence, and the lingering impact of trauma. Felicia is a stranger in a foreign land, grappling with language barriers and cultural differences. Mr. Hilditch is emotionally isolated due to show more his disturbing past and his inability to form genuine connections. Readers will quickly realize that he is taking advantage of Felicia’s trusting nature. The author builds suspense by inducing a dread that Felicia will fall victim to his machinations. It unfolds in the manner of a psychological thriller; however, I am pretty sure thriller lovers will be disappointed, as it is almost entirely character driven and there is little “action.”

The writing style is subtle. Trevor expects readers to infer much about the characters’ actions. Eventually, past experiences will be revealed, and the reader will understand more about the motivations of the two main characters. It is more of an exploration of the damage caused by trauma, and how it negatively impacts social interactions. I ended up with mixed feelings. I liked the character development and the writing style but found it a bit slow and repetitive. show less

William Trevor is fast becoming a favourite author of mine. I thoroughly enjoyed "The Story of Lucy Galt" and his recent collection of short stories, "A Little on the Side". Felicia's Journey is one of his earlier books, published in 1994. It is excellent. Trevor is a master at evoking emotions, moods, impressions with an impressive economy of words and only the briefest of descriptions, allowing the reader to fill-in the details and thus engaging the reader more fully into the story.

Felicia is a small-town Irish girl trapped in an unhappy family where she is basically the charwoman for her father, invalid grandmother, and three taciturn brothers. She falls for the charms of an Irish boy home visiting from England, the first boy to pay show more her any attention, and she gets pregnant. Having only a vague idea of where the boyfriend is living and working (he has told her he works in lawn mower manufacturing plant), she takes money from the house and flees to England. She cannot even find the manufacturer which may never have existed or which went out of business some years earlier. Increasingly distraught, and more critically, vulnerable, Felicia meets Mr.Hilditch whom she innocently asks for directions on day. Mr.Hilditch works as a catering manager in a large firm; he lives by routine in his personal and professional lives, he lives alone, a man who likes food and who has the girth to attest to it. He is respected and well-liked in his place of work; an inoffensive, pleasant man, who makes no demands and who is unfailingly polite and considerate to all. But he harbours demons and preys upon weak, unconnected, lonely, abandoned, vulnerable women. Felicia fits the bill perfectly as he "aids" her in her search for her boyfriend while all the time thwarting any real progress so as to increase her vulnerability and despair.

Trevor limns his characters wonderfully, again, leaving things unsaid, letting the story unfold, leaving the reader wondering whether Mr.Hilditch is a serial killer of women or just a pathetic, lonely man who finds pleasure in being seen in public with these women (but away from his usual haunts), constructing all kinds of fantasies in his mind as to what others might be thinking in looking at him and his partner.

Felicia breaks the pattern though because he takes her into is house, and when they break, there is a connection that is known to others and that comes to the fore. This completely unnerves Mr.Hilditch whose whole, carefully constructed, protected, isolated, cocooned life starts to unravel.

The novel, also a theme in "Lucy Galt", also deals with the tragic consequences of words hastily spoken in anger, or the misinterpretation of intentions that can set people down unchangeable paths of anguish for both parties left wandering and disconnected, when the simplest re-connection would lead to reconciliation.

Watching the relationship between Felicia and Mr.Hilditch is liking watching a train wreck in slow motion. You can see what is going to happen, and you can't stop it, but you are not entirely sure how complete the disaster might be. Trevor maintains that tension and emotional engagement throughout and even in the end he does not fall for the easy solution because life is not often like that. A very fine writer. show less

what a strange book. When I picked it up (for a book club, of course) I didn't do any research so I had no idea what I was getting in to.
I thought it would be a tale about a girl struggling with unexpected romance and struggling without a mother

little did I know, it was really about a man stalking and hunting a girl and playing little games to ensnare her into his trap (a trap he'd set many times) to kill other girls.
Really, I should have checked it out ahead of time and prepared myself for this kind of book. It's just disturbing to be in this guy's head AT ALL. Not really a good lazy Sunday read, be warned....

9.5/10

An interesting occurrence happened on the way to the fair: Alice Munro and Stephen King, neither watching where they were going, collided into each other, with paper notes flying high and wild. When all the pages had settled on the lawn and been re-gathered by their respective authors, each walked away with a bundled manuscript, not realizing that their pages had become enmeshed in each other's work. Result: William Trevor, story-teller extraordinaire!

Oh. My. What a wondrous web he weaves!

While channelling Munro's obsessive attention to domestic and mundane detail, and capturing King's ability to make your skin crawl on even a sunny Sunday morning, Trevor delivers a captivating portrait of the life of a diseased mind who spins his show more web to ensnare a lonely, lost and heart-sick young woman.

I was not prepared for how this novel unravelled: I imagined something more sedate, more conventional heartbreak than the kind that was to come. What made it more disconcerting was the way the trail crept up on the reader, much like the protagonist crept up on Felicia: the slow, insidious seduction-that-was-not-a-seduction.

Trevor manages to ensnare one completely: I turned blue without breath, and jumped out of my skin when Felicia dropped the piece from the fire grate.

Can't seem to get enough of William Trevor stories, after my first stumble with [b:Three Early Novels: The Old Boys / The Boarding-House / The Love Department|161163|Three Early Novels The Old Boys / The Boarding-House / The Love Department|William Trevor|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387738328l/161163._SY75_.jpg|155545]. show less

A harrowing tale where the unwed and pregnant Felicia, "an innocent girl from the bogs of Ireland" in one view, travels to England to find the father.

She meets, or is actually skillfully stalked by, Mr. Hilditch, the creepiest and most conniving of characters. You don't know at first just how creepy. Trevor just as skillfully doles out bits of Hilditch's character and background until his full story comes into view.

Felicia teeters between danger and almost safety for the entire story. The suspense is on every page.

This is my final book from the Mookse Madness list, and is perhaps the most difficult of them to assess and review (there are 64 books on the list, but I had read 43 of them before it was announced). As always Trevor's prose is immaculate, and he shows great empathy for his characters while subjecting them to hideous torments.

Initially the story appears to be that of Felicia, an innocent 17-year old Irish girl who becomes pregnant by Johnny Lysaght, a slightly older man who works in England and has told her he works in a lawn-mower factory (though her father tells her he is in the British army). Felicia's attempts to contact him fail, and she steals some money from her family to enable her to travel to England to search for him, taking show more just a couple of plastic bags of belongings. Her searches soon prove fruitless.

Next we are introduced to Hilditch, a lonely middle-aged man who works as a catering manager for a factory. He initially appears to befriend and help Felicia, tells her he has a wife who is seriously ill in hospital and provides a few leads for her search for Johnny, but it soon becomes clear that he is not telling her all he knows. A lighter subplot concerns a crackpot religious sect who go round door to door pushing their message - one of these also befriends Felicia. The denouement starts when Felicia discovers that most of her money has disappeared. I can't describe how I feel about this without resorting to spoilers, so please do not read on if you intend to read this book soon!

She returns to Hilditch, who takes her in and arranges an abortion for her. About two thirds of the way through there is a dramatic scene in which Felicia asks Hilditch for money to return home, he suggests a late night drive and she rightly suspects his true motive is to dispose of her, so she tries to escape. We then move to Hilditch's perspective, and the next few chapters describe his further mental disintegration as he is unable to remember what happened to Felicia - we are led to believe that he has murdered her as he has dealt with the several other lonely troubled girls he has befriended, a torment which eventually leads him to suicide. He is harassed by the religious group, who know that the missing Felicia mentioned him, and he eventually admits to having taken her money. But in the final chapter we discover that Felicia escaped to a vagrant life in another city, so there is a tentative note of redemption.

This is a brilliantly executed character study, Hilditch is a chillingly macabre but very human creation, but it is a very bleak book and a deeply uneasy one to read, and it left me with serious reservations about Trevor's motivation to write it and his intentions. show less

I have several of William Trevor’s novels and short story collections on my shelves, but this was the first work of his I’ve read. What a dark and creepy introduction! Felicia is a naïve Irish teenager, left pregnant by a local boy and abandoned upon his return to England where he supposedly works in a factory. She travels there in search of him but meets up with the helpful Mr. Hilditch instead.

The novel started off rather slowly for me but as the tension mounted and the atmosphere of foreboding and menace increased, I found myself more and more involved in the story. Trevor’s great gift here is to present the reader with “warts and all” portraits of his characters but to stir a sense of empathy for them, as well. The show more snatches of memory and dreams he describes give the novel a disjointed, uneasy feeling that only adds to the dark atmosphere. It’s all very bleak but also very well-written. I am glad I have more of Trevor’s work to explore. show less