The Story of Lucy Gault

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The Story of Lucy Gault is a novel written William Trevor in 2002. The book is divided into three sections: the childhood, middle age and older times of the girl, Lucy. The story takes place in Ireland during the transition to the 21st century. It follows the protagonist Lucy and her immediate contacts. It was well received by a number of critics and made the short lists of the booker prize and whitbread prize of 2002 [1]. The story, comparisons to a similar book, and interpretation of the author are discussed below.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It begins with Lucy, on a night in 1921. She is the only child of a Protestant land owner in Cork County coast. It is set during The Troubles, when Protestant landowners caught in the battle between the IRA and the British army had their houses burned [2]. The place is under martial law and Captain Gault is disturbed by young arsonists from the nearby village. When he fires a warning shot with his old rifle, he injures a boy in the shoulder. Out of fear, the family moves to England. Lucy is not told why her family moved and longs for the house she was kept from and the sea closeby. On the eve of their departure, she hides in the woods. Due to a series of events, her parents are led to believe that she drowned in the sea [3].

By the time she is discovered, her parents are gone. So, she gets what she wished for, to live in the house, being taken care of by the house-servants turned caretaker-farmers. This is common in a number of William Trevor characters, they should not wish for something as it becomes true. Lucy lives a very lonely life, reading books and keeping bees. She feels very guilty about running away and thus feels that she deserves her loneliness. When another character, Ralph, tries to relieve her of her sad life, she feels that she cannot let him love her without her getting forgiveness from her parents. This is a kind of redemption. After the war, her father returns just too late to salvage her happiness. They settle into an uneasy companionship, with too much unspoken.

Having lost the love of her life, she forms a bond with the person who was wounded by her father. Lucy becomes a sort of Protestant saint, and spends many years visiting the asylum where the person is incarcerated in his confusion and his silence: like so many others in this story, he is "the man who didn't want to speak". Both of them are victims of Ireland's politics. The inextricable link between the Catholic boy brought up to be a revolutionary and the isolated Protestant girl, both terrified in their past. fates are set against the changing, ordinary, vigorous life of the little town, which is briskly moving into the 21st century. Lucy in old age sees people with phones to their ears and hears on the wireless about the internet, and wonders what it is. Time is a healer for some and a destroyer for others. The idea of a little girl doing something that eventually destroys so many lives is also used by Ian McEwan in Atonement [4].

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

With another author, this tale would be one of melodrama, but in William Trevor's expert hands, the story is one of simplicity and poise. He is the modern master of the life never quite lived, his fiction ever aware of the spaces between his characters, the silence that always threatens them. This is a gravely beautiful, subtle and haunting Irish novel. Like so much of Trevor's work, this is a story of the past, of memory, and of how time works [5].