LOVE AND SUMMER

Yesterday Rita Rud told me that she received William Trevor's new novel as a birthday gift. I went immediately to Von's to purchase the book. LOVE AND SUMMER. She said that she recalls something he said in an interview: before he writes a scene, he writes out everything the character did that day. He needs to know every little thing before he can cut back and write the scenes that matter to the novel. Some people do this in their minds. Some writers keep a notebook with tidbits of the character's day. But I have never heard of this strategy and it makes sense. The problem is that many, if not most, writers do not want to waste time and they would see such pre-writing as a waste of time. It's obviously working for William Trevor who has published 13 novels, 2 novellas, 12 collections of stories, 2 non-fiction books, and 1 children's book. He is 81 years old. It seems a shame to me that many of the young writers I know (by young I mean 40 and under) are not interested in William Trevor's work. I'm not sure why. He writes about love, desire, disappointment, regret, societal norms and the secret fights against those norms, fate. And as Elizabeth Stuckey-French says: He has a wonderful sense of the absurd. There is so much to learn from reading his work; there is so much pure enjoyment to be had. LOVE AND SUMMER starts off deliciously, with a young orphan girl married off to an older man.