William Trevor: A sculptor of words

“That’s quite an important thing for me, and actually I leave a lot to the reader. This book is a very good example. Lots of things haven’t happened yet. There’s a whole life ahead for Florian on leaving Ireland; there is a question of whether Ellie is pregnant or not.”

Which leaves ajar the possibility of writing a sequel. Is this his intention? “Not at all,” he laughs. “In fact I’ve already done a sequel to it. And then I’ve cut and chopped it down to the point that there’s not a lot there that shouldn’t be there. I’ve taken the characters further and so I know where their journeys will take them – I’ve done that but I’m not going to tell you! Once the book is done you’ve reached the end of a road – but it’s more the end of my road. The characters will go on.

“It’s something you do. There’s a point when you have to establish ‘That’s the end.’ It could go on, have a sequel, but all that is another option. That occurs with every novel ever written. It’s a question of order. I’ve found in writing novels and short stories that what you are doing is creating order out of the mess you make. Out of that raw material you hack your way back.”

The son of a bank manager, William Trevor Cox was born in Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. The family moved whenever and wherever his father’s job dictated, so the banker’s clutch ended up as commercial gypsies – posted to Enniscorthy, Skibbereen, Youghal, Tipperary and beyond – a constantly shifting landscape of homes, schools, acquaintances.

Education was scattered across 13 different schools punctuated by unofficial holidays in between. At the end of an uneasy adolescence – his estranged parents would eventually separate – Trevor graduated in history from Trinity College Dublin. He then switched tracks completely and became a full-time sculptor, something he feels analogous to his subsequent commitment to the written word.

For each story the impulse of an original creative idea is his raw material. From this starting point he finds where the idea will take him and then pares it away, continually shaping the narrative by identifying the key elements, developing them and discarding the rest. To fashion the story, he follows the simple adage that less is more. It’s a slow, methodical process, but the hallmark of Trevor’s writing is a spare, lucid style bereft of extraneous detail. The sculptor may have become a writer, but his 16-year dalliance with clay – he gave it up when he found his work becoming “too abstract” – has certainly informed his approach to print.

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Nster.com