William Trevor, A Bit on the Side

Joseph O'Neill reviews William Trevor's new story collection A Bit on the Side in the new issue of The Atlantic.

Earlier this year the novelist Michael Chabon confessed in The New York Times Book Review to the vice of quickly tossing books aside. "Your beginning better be just killer," he warned. William Trevor is refreshingly free of anxiety on this score. He makes no attempt to arrest or flatter or reassure the reader—there are no one-liners, no improbably witty characters, no far-out shenanigans, no patent-leather prose. He expects our attention and, most of all, respects it. Which is why, outmoded though they may seem, these stories are the opposite of dated.

There's something to be said for writers who resist trends and stick to what they do well. (Or, as Dirty Harry once put it, albeit not as a compliment, "A man's got to know his limitations.") Trevor's book has been duly added to my precariously tottering to-read pile.