The Silence in the Garden | Fiction: general and literary | Modern and contemporary Fiction (post 1945)

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The Silence in the Garden by William Trevor – a classic early novel by one of the world’s greatest writersFamily secrets take their toll on the children of an old Irish familyIn the summer of 1904 Sarah Pollenfax, the daughter of an impecunious clergyman, arrives at Carriglas, an island off the coast of Cork, to act as governess for her distant cousins. It’s a magical time in a magical place. But when she comes back almost thirty years later, after the First World War and the Irish Civil War have taken their toll, she discovers that there were things going on during that apparently idyllic summer which now horrify her and which cast a long shadow over the remnants of the family still living there.’William Trevor’s precisions and indirections slowly and balefully accumulate in this, his most ambitious novel’ Anthony Thwaite, London Review of Books’Offers marvels with Mr Trevor’s customary understated dexterity’ New York TimesWilliam Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, in 1928. He spent his childhood in Ireland and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, but has lived in England for many years. An acknowledged master of the short-story form, he has also written many highly acclaimed novels: he has won the Whitbread Fiction Prize three times and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. His most recent novel was Love and Summer (Penguin, 2010).

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