“William Trevor: Selected Stories”

William Trevor’s stories have been admired for years, and now they’re collected in one volume, Selected Stories (Penguin Group, 2010). Of the stories, Charles McGrath, writing in the New York Times, says “there is about Trevor’s stories something honed and sculptural, verging at times on abstraction.” He adds, “They’re not modernist, but neither are they antique. They’re almost literally timeless.” This observation is parallel to Wall Street Journal’s Lionel Shriver, who says, “Mr. Trevor’s stories are sad but rarely depressing. They leave one marveling at the astonishing variety of other people’s private, singular disappointments.”