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Nov 08, 2011

Sue rated it:

Beautifully written tale of Anglo-Irish family in 1920s Ireland and their daughter Lucy, filled with Irish fate and sadness but also with Irish resilience, forgiveness and wonderful language.

A child's rebellious act changes the lives of everyone within her sphere of influence; it's what every child fears come true. Lucy lives it and becomes mythic in her "grand" house in the small Irish town. To say more will be to tell the story which I don't want to do. Suffice it to say More...

11 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Brent rated it:

A very sad, powerful book written in clear prose.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2008

Liz rated it:

There is no doubt that William Trevor is a beautiful writer. I love his style - so Irish, so descriptive. He crafts sentences like a landscape painter - always from a respective distance, but so rich in detail. The Story of Lucy Gault is sort of modern gothic, layered with tragedy and misunderstanding and set in a windswept coastal house that is as removed from society as its characters are removed from each other. At first, I was drawn into the situation, but as the story went on, a sense o More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2009

Nancy rated it:

Break out the kleenex -- you'll definitely need it! How sad -- a novel about what could have been but wasn't and how a woman comes to live with tragedy.

Set in Ireland, at the time that it was divided, Captain Gault, his wife and their daughter Lucy all live at the family home of Lahardane. One night, their dog gets poisoned; the Captain fires at a group of young men and hits one. His wife is convinced that because she's English, they have been marked for trouble; he tries to go and tal More...

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Jan 15, 2009

trishtrash rated it:

Lucy Gault’s family are planning to leave troubled Ireland behind them; their estate and their lives are at risk while they remain; however, it is in leaving that the true rift occurs and the consequences are played out with an emphasis on pathos, but also on forgiveness and healing.

I do not generally do well with ‘redemptive’ tales if there is no particular ‘happy’ or ‘tragic’ ending to hang one’s final feelings for a book on. Lucy Gault’s story was engagingly written and the plight More...

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Feb 07, 2012

Ben rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 23, 2011

John rated it:

This review contains spoilers.

This is a wonderful, evocative novel tracing the life of the Gault family beginning during The Troubles in the twenties. Fearing reprisals against Irish nationalists and a previous attempt to burn down their family estate, Lahardane, the Captain Everard Gault and his wife Helene consider fleeing for the Continent. Lucy, their daughter, overhears them talking about moving, but wants to do anything but move from her home on the Irish seaside, the only plac More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 10, 2011

Susan rated it:

This is a story of wasted lives and what cculd have been. Sometimes a thoughtless decision causes consequences that last a lifetime. That's what happens to the Gaults. Due to a childish decision by Lucy, the Gaults lives are changed forever. What would have happenened if Lucy had emigrated to England with her parents instead of faking death? Would they have lived better lives? Would they have gone to Italy? Would they have returned to Ireland? It's the unknowing that's the hardest. The reader th More...

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Aug 12, 2011

Ian rated it:

Chosen because its on my list of 1001 books to read before you die. I need to live to a very long age to get through them, but the list has thrown up some unexpected surprises and ones like this one that I struggle through but get to the end and feel just about satisfied.

Rural Cork in 1921 and the Gault are an anglo irish family of the landowning classes. The patriach, Captain Gault, shoots at trespassers at the height of the IRA problems and accidently wounds one. This despite th More...

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Jul 30, 2011

Laysee rated it:

The Story of Lucy Gault is a disquieting, haunting, and sad novel worthy of the Booker Prize for which it was nominated in 2002. Faced with the threat of arson to their home (the plight of many Anglo-Irish homes in 1921), Captain Everard and Heloise Gault prepared to flee Lahardane, their modest but much loved estate on the southeast coast of Ireland and go to England. But their daughter, eight-year-old Lucy, was in love with “the glen and the woods and the seashore, the flat rocks where the shr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 10, 2011

Keiron rated it:

The concept that gives rise to why Lucy's story is in the first place told, is a distressing one. What struck me almost from page one, was a deep foreboding of a not yet disclosed but what surely is to come tragic event. While, to be sure, Lucy is the fulcrum for this, Trevor's brilliance here, is to explore the resulting broader, even deeper scarring,repercussions. As such, it never lets up its intensity, playing so central and coursing a theme right throughout, even lighter moments, the small More...

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Aug 31, 2009

Alexander rated it:

The inner flap of this book reads:

"In this brilliant, subtle and moving story of love, guilt and forgiveness, Trevor has written a novel that stands among the best literature in the English language."

Lol...I hope others think that's as funny as I do.

'Best literature ever in English' aside, this is one of those 'what-else-ya-got' melancholy books where it seems that the author was engaged in a bet to see if he can write the most unceasingly lugubrious More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 12, 2009

Susan added it

[close:] A difficult novel for any parent to read, William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault recounts the tale of a young girl whose Protestant family is driven from its rural Irish home in 1921. Eight-year-old Lucy is in love with Lahardane: the old house itself, the woods, the nearby beach, the shells and fir cones and sticks that she collected like treasure. The day before her family is scheduled to flee Ireland, leaving the house and furnishings in the care of trusted servants, Lucy runs away More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Jessi rated it:

Holy Crap. This may be the most depressing thing I have ever read, well probably not most, but wow.

First off this is for my Gran who always goes on about "those bleedin mobile phones" and in her day they "didn't have a god damn phone in the house,can you imagine?" No I can't I think of Little House on the Prairie instantly and then want to cuddle with the TV, my mobile or any of the indoor plumbing, just so they know how much I appreciate them. Well if this happe More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 21, 2011

Sunni rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Aug 14, 2011

Janelle rated it:

This was my first William Trevor book. The author bio lists MANY prestigious awards and quite a long bibliography, so I'm a touch embarrassed I haven't heard of him before, but now at least I can say I've read one of his novels.

The Story of Lucy Gault is a deeply atmospheric book. It takes place over most of the 20th century, beginning in 1921 with an act that drives the rest of Lucy's story, and ending at some unknown point in the late 20th or early 21st century (there is a referen More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 18, 2009

El rated it:

When eight-year-old Lucy Gault's parents are forced to leave their home in Ireland for continental Europe, Lucy is heartbroken. She has come to love the home and the sea and can not imagine a life anywhere else. In attempts to keep her parents from leaving she runs away. Due to a series of unfortunate events her act leads her parents to believe she has killed herself and, after a time, leave Ireland. When Lucy returns to her home and finds her parents are gone she is overcome with grief, gui More...

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Aug 15, 2011

Janet rated it:

In my heart of hearts I like cheerful stories with happy endings. This book definitely doesn’t fall into that category at all yet it haunts me with its beauty.

Perhaps the Story of Lucy Gault seems even more poignant to me because I also watched the movie Five minutes of Heaven starring Liam Neeson during the time I was reading this book. Both tales relate the torturous aftermath in individual lives on both sides resulting from incidents in Ireland sparked by group hatred of the rival More...

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Jun 22, 2010

Victoria rated it:

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Feb 09, 2012

Rusty rated it:

There are those who say that the writing in this novel is lyrical. I agree. I believe that Trevor writes like a grand master creating a painting that cries out to the heart and mind of the viewer or an accomplished composer who compositions touch one's emotions.

It's the early 1920s in Ireland as the Gault family prepares to leave their home because of violence that threatens them and their beloved Lucy. But leaving Lahardane, her home, is unimaginable for the child whose best frien More...

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Dec 13, 2008

bookczuk rated it:

What a beautiful and tragic story. It is a short book, but the pages packed. I found myself wanting to race to find out what happened and how the story would reveal itself, but at the same time wanting to savor slowly the images created by the writing. Characters all richly fleshed out, shaped by sorrow. I shall have to go back and read this again, for the pieces I know I rushed past. This could have been a totally maudlin tale, but is instead skillfully told. Lucy, her parents, Ralph, Bridget a More...

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Jun 26, 2011

Melee rated it:

I had a difficult time reading the first 50 pages or so of this book and I began to think I would finish the book and mourn the lost time I spent reading it. But slowly I found myself drawn in by the story's quiet tone and lilting sadness. William Trevor's writing is so quintessentially Irish and I've decided that's a good thing. I enjoy the tragedy that many stories by Irish writers posses.

Also, I found the main premise fascinating. We live in an era where people are rarely more th More...

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Feb 02, 2010

Anastasia rated it:

How depressing it is to find that one of my favorite authors has lost his grip on storytelling. The idea for this novel is wonderful, promising, enthralling, even--but Trevor spins it out with tedious flatness, allowing so little to happen in the lives or minds of the characters that I came to a point I'd never reached with Trevor before: I wondered he'd really written it, or like James Patterson, had passed it off to an assistant to produce. The most lamentable part of this effort at a novel is More...

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May 01, 2009

Chrissy rated it:

The story of a headstrong, eight year old girl growing up in Ireland in 1921 - not long before Trevor himself was born. It is a chronicle of disaster foretold - beautifully crafted and written in lyrical prose. I first read this book six years ago and am interested to see if I enjoy it more or less this time.... more to come.... Having now read the book for the second time, I am left with the same reservation as I had six years ago - one of credibility. Without telling too much of the story, I f More...

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Nov 11, 2010

Marialyce rated it:

I thought the writing and the story telling was outstanding. Mr. Trevor has a way of making his characters ever so deep but does give the reader the equipment to understand their motivations and what drives them. I think he sums up this book in his own words. "Calamity shaped a life, when long ago, chance was so cruel. Calamity shapes the story that is told, and the reason for its being....

Lucy, a most tragic heroine, makes one mistake and suffers for it in innumerable ways. She l More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2009

Danielle rated it:

Having been assigned to read The Story of Lucy Gault: A Novel by my Contemporary Irish Fiction professor, I was expecting a novel that stood on the shoulders of giants. But far from finding a story that drew inspiration from the hauntingly ethereal prose of W.B. Yeats or the Joycean immersive narrative style and devilishly cunning technique of strewing key information out for the careful reader to pick apart and reassamble over time, I found a story that moved forward in stilted, child-like pros More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 29, 2009

Sharon rated it:

A story about how one decision or act we make in our lives, even innocently as a child, ripples out to change not only the course of our lives but that of many other people. It's a story of real life -- loss, loneliness, guilt, love, tragedy, and living and coping with the choices we make. Lucy's story could be anyone's story with different scenes and characters, in almost any time period.

I like the photo of the author on the back cover. What a wonderful face with a hint of soul More...

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Feb 23, 2011

Lucy rated it:

This was such an unbelievably sad book: the kind of sadness that presses on your chest and makes you feel like you can't move. It was excellent.

It was a beautifully written tale about living in the past, incidental decisions and worries about things that don't matter to anyone but ourselves.

I thought it was clearly a symbolic representation of the encompassing effect of ireland's past on its current generations. A lesson in perceiving individual significance in a bigger w More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 14, 2011

Mary Ellen rated it:

This book greatly exceeded my expectations. I picked it up for a GR discussion group, but feared it would be depressing and lifeless. Wrong, wrong. The characters are alive and 3-dimensional, even the potentially stereotypical couple who maintain the house and grounds for the family. The writing is lovely but does not overwhelm the story and characters it serves -- no self-indulgent over-writing here. The writing is economical without being too spare; Trevor creates the worlds of the family More...

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Oct 03, 2010

Kristy rated it:

This book is tragic with a capital T and almost theological in its journey from the arbitrary cruelness of life to the acceptance and enjoyment of what remains. In 1920s Ireland, a little girl and her Protestant parents are about to flee from the threats of the Troubles. Lucy decides to run away so that her parents will decide not to move to England, but a combination of mistakes, misunderstandings, and human nature shatter the lives of the entire family. It can be hard to catch your breath and More...

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