What do you think?
Family Sins & Other Stories
In Family Sins, William Trevor brings his tremendous empathy and keen eye for detail to these gemlike tales of country life in Ireland. Here are twelve portraits of everyday folded in crisis-haunted by memory, battered by circumstance. The middle-aged women in ?The Printmaker? and ?August Saturday? are consumed by fleeting, long-ago affairs; the young boy in ?Children of the Headmaster? is terrified by the disappointments and awful mysteries of impending adulthood; and ?Events at Drimaghleen? hinges on a gruesome murder-suicide.Whether grim, poignant, or shot through with flashes of subtle humour, Family Sins displays the deft characterization and precise, involving prose that readers the world over have come to expect from William Trevor.Praise for William?To be a master of the short story and a master of the novel is a distinction achieved by precious few writers, but such a master is William Trevor.?-- The Washington Post Book World?William Trevor may well be the best writer of short fiction in the English language.? -- The London Free Press?Trevor is a master storyteller, a skilled spinner of affecting, compassionate tales.?-- The Edmonton Journal
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
William Trevor
175 books805 followersWilliam Trevor, KBE grew up in various provincial towns and attended a number of schools, graduating from Trinity College, in Dublin, with a degree in history. He first exercised his artistry as a sculptor, working as a teacher in Northern Ireland and then emigrated to England in search of work when the school went bankrupt. He could have returned to Ireland once he became a successful writer, he said, "but by then I had become a wanderer, and one way and another, I just stayed in England ... I hated leaving Ireland. I was very bitter at the time. But, had it not happened, I think I might never have written at all."
In 1958 Trevor published his first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, to little critical success. Two years later, he abandoned sculpting completely, feeling his work had become too abstract, and found a job writing copy for a London advertising agency. 'This was absurd,' he said. 'They would give me four lines or so to write and four or five days to write it in. It was so boring. But they had given me this typewriter to work on, so I just started writing stories. I sometimes think all the people who were missing in my sculpture gushed out into the stories.' He published several short stories, then his second and third novels, which both won the Hawthornden Prize (established in 1919 by Alice Warrender and named after William Drummond of Hawthornden, the Hawthornden Prize is one of the UK's oldest literary awards). A number of other prizes followed, and Trevor began working full-time as a writer in 1965.
Since then, Trevor has published nearly 40 novels, short story collections, plays, and collections of nonfiction. He has won three Whitbread Awards, a PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1977 Trevor was appointed an honorary (he holds Irish, not British, citizenship) Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to literature and in 2002 he was elevated to honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). Since he began writing, William Trevor regularly spends half the year in Italy or Switzerland, often visiting Ireland in the other half. He lived in Devon, in South West England, on an old mill surrounded by 40 acres of land.
In 1958 Trevor published his first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, to little critical success. Two years later, he abandoned sculpting completely, feeling his work had become too abstract, and found a job writing copy for a London advertising agency. 'This was absurd,' he said. 'They would give me four lines or so to write and four or five days to write it in. It was so boring. But they had given me this typewriter to work on, so I just started writing stories. I sometimes think all the people who were missing in my sculpture gushed out into the stories.' He published several short stories, then his second and third novels, which both won the Hawthornden Prize (established in 1919 by Alice Warrender and named after William Drummond of Hawthornden, the Hawthornden Prize is one of the UK's oldest literary awards). A number of other prizes followed, and Trevor began working full-time as a writer in 1965.
Since then, Trevor has published nearly 40 novels, short story collections, plays, and collections of nonfiction. He has won three Whitbread Awards, a PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1977 Trevor was appointed an honorary (he holds Irish, not British, citizenship) Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to literature and in 2002 he was elevated to honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). Since he began writing, William Trevor regularly spends half the year in Italy or Switzerland, often visiting Ireland in the other half. He lived in Devon, in South West England, on an old mill surrounded by 40 acres of land.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
January 22, 2020
Banville ha definito Trevor il più grande autore contemporaneo di racconti. Personalmente, preferisco i suoi romanzi. In ogni caso, è sempre Trevor: immensa delicatezza di sentimenti, immensa finezza psicologica, immensa grazia nel raccontare le vite di persone comuni, uomini e donne e ragazzini, alle quali un giorno è capitato qualcosa di comune, di piccolo, di casuale, di apparentemente insignificante, che ha mutato il corso della loro esistenza.
June 22, 2024
I’ve never understood why short stories are not more popular, especially in an age when we have shorter and shorter concentration spans.
Many can be read in the time it takes to visit the lavatory – I’m not recommending that, but many of us have been through phases where trips to the bathroom are the only times we get to read.
But far more important than that is the effect that producing them has on the craft of writing. You have to make every word count and to conjure an atmosphere so vivid that readers fill in any gaps for themselves.
There’s no room for flab or padding. A great short story writer needs to have magic at their fingertips.
The great modern master was the Irishman William Trevor whose novels and short stories linger long in the mind. Family Sins is an especially haunting collection and a great antidote to many over the over-written self important novels of today.
Many can be read in the time it takes to visit the lavatory – I’m not recommending that, but many of us have been through phases where trips to the bathroom are the only times we get to read.
But far more important than that is the effect that producing them has on the craft of writing. You have to make every word count and to conjure an atmosphere so vivid that readers fill in any gaps for themselves.
There’s no room for flab or padding. A great short story writer needs to have magic at their fingertips.
The great modern master was the Irishman William Trevor whose novels and short stories linger long in the mind. Family Sins is an especially haunting collection and a great antidote to many over the over-written self important novels of today.
November 15, 2025
With my tenth William Trevor, I am back in familiar territory. Often painful, often taking me to those uncomfortable places inside me that I am not ready to confront. But always comforting somehow. It’s a strange conundrum.
These stories explore the little wounds left to fester for years until they reopen completely, the tiny guilts that eat one up, malice in everyday spaces among ordinary people, the subtle exploitation of the working class in the name of ‘doing good’, the insurmountable pain in ordinary lives. Trevor’s writing is spare, and what he leaves to imagination is as important as what is on the page. These tales are told through black humour, sometimes with a deep gravity, always with compassion even for the most wretched characters.
One complaint I have with some contemporary books, especially debut novels (and why I prefer older writers), is the extra wordy lyricism that is added to hide a lack of real meaning. And here’s a craftsman whose writing is sharp, haunting, beautiful without needing any of these extras. Bringing to life the minutest details of everyday life through the sparest of prose. Extraordinary things happening within ordinary spaces, lives changed in a way that are noticeable to the individual but never to the outsider. The way Trevor illuminates such mundanities with beauty.
I am deeply envious of people who are yet to encounter their first Trevor.
These stories explore the little wounds left to fester for years until they reopen completely, the tiny guilts that eat one up, malice in everyday spaces among ordinary people, the subtle exploitation of the working class in the name of ‘doing good’, the insurmountable pain in ordinary lives. Trevor’s writing is spare, and what he leaves to imagination is as important as what is on the page. These tales are told through black humour, sometimes with a deep gravity, always with compassion even for the most wretched characters.
One complaint I have with some contemporary books, especially debut novels (and why I prefer older writers), is the extra wordy lyricism that is added to hide a lack of real meaning. And here’s a craftsman whose writing is sharp, haunting, beautiful without needing any of these extras. Bringing to life the minutest details of everyday life through the sparest of prose. Extraordinary things happening within ordinary spaces, lives changed in a way that are noticeable to the individual but never to the outsider. The way Trevor illuminates such mundanities with beauty.
I am deeply envious of people who are yet to encounter their first Trevor.
August 12, 2017
The master of the short story form. Reading William Trevor's short stories is like smelling a scent that evokes a memory tinged with regret or the dying fall of a piece of music that lingers in the memory. The stories set in Ireland and Italy are shot with poignancy and loss depicting the lives of ordinary people colliding quietly with the major themes of life, love, death, loss, betrayal and resignation
April 10, 2017
I was not always comfortable in the places these stories took me, but I'm glad I read them.
June 21, 2024
irish writers and their short stories <3
July 28, 2021
A master of the short story was William Trevor, an Irishman to be sure but with a touch of genius that crosses borders...wherever they are found. The sheer gift for understanding 'common people' made him a legend, casting a sympathetic light on every over-turned human stone to illuminate details that might escape the casual observer. Trevor is a clear benchmark on the whole panoply of this briefest form of prose literature...& showed a poetic spirit too. All 12 stories in this 1990 collection have their value & offer such a contrast to more graphic writers that William Trevor should be read in schools as the perfect example of 'slices of life' stories, each one resonating with humanity
Read
February 18, 2025William Trevor is one of my moms favorite authors so I have been reading this to her for the past few days. These stories are pretty grim and a lot of the nurses have been raising eyebrows at me, but what am I supposed to do? It's her favorite. Unfortunately storytime for my mom ends up being storytime for the ICU, so tomorrow I will bring in something more uplifting. I love my mom. My favorite story was "In Love With Ariadne".
October 5, 2020
Plenty of sadness, secrets and shame here, as well. Trevor's scalpel, forever sharp, exposes inner lives with an almost chilling precision. What's shown in these stories is often unpleasant, but always very human.
February 8, 2017
I was not previously familiar with this short storyist but wow! These stories are small but hearty, and linger.
June 28, 2017
So compelling short stories that celebrate the often bewildering complexities of human nature with a rich mixture of insight and eloquence that are hallmarks of this (r.i.p.) uniquely gifted writer.
August 20, 2018
I enjoyed this easy read simply because it was written by William Trevor. He could of written a recipe and I would need to read it. He is so talented at getting inside our heads as emotions play out.
January 8, 2020
3.5 I did not enjoy these stories as much as some of his others.
August 6, 2023
"Does it happen, she wonders, in other people's lives that a single event influences all subsequent time?"
I love you, William Trevor.
I love you, William Trevor.
October 10, 2023
Anything written by William Trevor gets 5 stars from me. He's an absolute master of the short story, and one of my favorite authors.
December 22, 2025
中文书名太绝了，书里的一个个人物，用欲望，用贪婪，用怨恨，用责任，用希望编造出自己的囚笼，成为生活的囚徒
May 30, 2014
Any writer who has been declared "the greatest writer in the English language" by an army of prestigious critics - the New Yorker, the London Free Press etc. - demands a closer examination then most. Like Shakespeare, William Trevor might forever be a victim of his own praise: lauded by so many, the expectations for his work can be so high that one risks a book full of disappointment. This fear is not realized in the case of Family Sins, a collection of stories published in 1999 which more or less exists as a good testament to what the literarti have long been so excited about.
Each of these stories takes place in the backwaters of Ireland where a series of townsfolk live their lives of quiet desperation, haunted by divorce, tragedy, disappointment and a life of general betrayal. They aren't necessarily sad stories, but they feature sad characters, such as the couple in "Events at Drimaghleen", whose personal tragedy is exploited by the media, or the titular character in "Kathleen's Field" who, for the sake of her family, endures a life of unhappy servitude. As narrator (eleven of the twelve stories are third person), Mr. Trevor reveals a genuine compassion for his characters, as if their fates are someone else's doing and not his own. For all their sorrow, each character reveals their own personal strength, whether it is in their wit, bravado or simply the strength to endure an unfortunate life.
Where Mr. Trevor truly proves his mettle, though, is in both the writing and structure. Like all the best authors, his writing never calls attention to itself. There is a poetry to his simplicity and his prose is elegant without ever becoming dull. In structuring these stories, Mr. Trevor often makes time so fluid that his characters easily slide between the present and the past - this is especially clear in the stories of people haunted by unrequited love or ill-fated affairs, like the women in "The Printmaker" or "August Saturday". But even when the structure is more conventional, there is a sense in the prose that these characters are not truly living in the present moment: all of them are somewhere else, recoiling into a world consisting of either memory or fantasy or both.
If I had to pick my favorites from this collection, I'd recommend "In Love with Ariadne" which details a young man's melancholy lust for his landlady's daughter; or "The Printmaker", which has virtually no story and yet manages to propel the reader along. And there is the surprisingly comic "A Trinity" about a couple who get sent on the wrong vacation - I say surprising because though it begins in a comic place, it ends in Mr. Trevor's usual territory of repression and disappointment.
Each of these stories takes place in the backwaters of Ireland where a series of townsfolk live their lives of quiet desperation, haunted by divorce, tragedy, disappointment and a life of general betrayal. They aren't necessarily sad stories, but they feature sad characters, such as the couple in "Events at Drimaghleen", whose personal tragedy is exploited by the media, or the titular character in "Kathleen's Field" who, for the sake of her family, endures a life of unhappy servitude. As narrator (eleven of the twelve stories are third person), Mr. Trevor reveals a genuine compassion for his characters, as if their fates are someone else's doing and not his own. For all their sorrow, each character reveals their own personal strength, whether it is in their wit, bravado or simply the strength to endure an unfortunate life.
Where Mr. Trevor truly proves his mettle, though, is in both the writing and structure. Like all the best authors, his writing never calls attention to itself. There is a poetry to his simplicity and his prose is elegant without ever becoming dull. In structuring these stories, Mr. Trevor often makes time so fluid that his characters easily slide between the present and the past - this is especially clear in the stories of people haunted by unrequited love or ill-fated affairs, like the women in "The Printmaker" or "August Saturday". But even when the structure is more conventional, there is a sense in the prose that these characters are not truly living in the present moment: all of them are somewhere else, recoiling into a world consisting of either memory or fantasy or both.
If I had to pick my favorites from this collection, I'd recommend "In Love with Ariadne" which details a young man's melancholy lust for his landlady's daughter; or "The Printmaker", which has virtually no story and yet manages to propel the reader along. And there is the surprisingly comic "A Trinity" about a couple who get sent on the wrong vacation - I say surprising because though it begins in a comic place, it ends in Mr. Trevor's usual territory of repression and disappointment.
February 1, 2012
My favorite was the last story, "Kathleen's Field," a heart-breakingly simple story of poverty set in 1948 rural Ireland.
Trevor's more recent collections of short stories are full of masterpieces. This one seemed to have a few "near misses" and one or two other stories that didn't really come close to hitting their mark.
Trevor's more recent collections of short stories are full of masterpieces. This one seemed to have a few "near misses" and one or two other stories that didn't really come close to hitting their mark.
May 1, 2016
Delicato e discreto nel raccontare sentimenti ed emozioni, nell'entrare "dentro" le persone che racconta. Un linguaggio solo in apparenza semplice che avvolge come in un mondo ovattato spettri e ricordi non sempre piacevoli.
October 10, 2017
Probabile che sia lontano dal mio genere, fatto sta che l'ho trovato noioso, inconsistente e soprattutto pieno di dettagli inutili e di storie senza capo nè coda che lasciano in sospeso la chiusura.
February 8, 2008
Short stories.
Some of them I would have liked to more of it, others where just so.
Some of them I would have liked to more of it, others where just so.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews