Several weeks later, Lucy Gault is discovered - alive - in the woods. Heartbroken, they decide to proceed with their departure from Laherdane. In the subsequent search, a piece of her clothing is found on the beach and her parents believe she is dead. She plans to run away to Dungarvan to Kitty Teresa, a maid who used to serve in the house, but she twists her ankle in nearby woods and crawls into a ruined house, unable to move.

On the day the Gaults are due to leave, Lucy goes missing. She is mordantly attached to the house and the lands around Laherdane, the landscape of a golden childhood. Lucy, their only daughter, aged eight, is distraught. The captain desperately tries to make amends with the family of the wounded young man but he realises that any action of his - no matter how well-meaning - will only further inflame local feeling against the Gaults, and that another attempt to oust the family is inevitable. Captain Gault takes a pot shot at one of them and injures him. One night, three young men attack the house, intent on burning them out.

Lucy Gault's parents, Everard and Heloise - the names are not coincidental - are Protestant landlords in the Cork of the 1920s. Some might regard it as familiar Trevor territory - the polite suffering of the Anglo-Irish - but psychologically The Story of Lucy Gault is closer in tone to Ian McEwan's latest masterful novel, Atonement - both feature pre-pubescent girls, who through a heedless act of immaturity, provoke tragic consequences for themselves and others.īriefly, the story is this.

William Trevor's latest novel is a discourse on grief and guilt.

The story of lucy gault reviews