Love and longing in Italy

William Trevor was one of those rare male writers who wrote about the lives and losses of middle-aged men and women — lives that are rarely put in the spotlight.

A certain kind of English fiction has come to be synonymous with expatriate novels set in Italy: heartbroken outsiders who rebuild their lives while refurbishing a dilapidated villa or two. Sunlight streams between poplars. There are bowls of pasta and delicious olive oil and sun-ripened tomatoes. Attractive locals provide the necessary romantic intrigue. For a while in the late ‘90s and early noughties, it was impossible to escape these books.

The second novella in William Trevor’s Two Lives (published in 1991) is titled My House in Umbria and is of such a different nature from the aforementioned romcoms that it seems to be from a different planet altogether. What they have in common is the Italian countryside and nothing else. The main character, Mrs Delahunty, is a writer of romances, though her life is not one of unbridled joy.

Having survived an explosion on a train, Mrs Delahunty invites three other survivors to stay with her in her villa and recuperate. The survivors include an elderly general, a young German man and a young girl. Another man soon arrives, claiming the girl as his own niece. Mrs Delahunty, already shown to be a fantasist, gradually starts spinning tales about each of her guests that soon veer into darker territory. As a survivor of the most unimaginable abuse, it soon becomes clear that past traumas are catching up with her and reality is being distorted.

Trauma and hurt

The first novella in Two Lives is Reading Turgenev and is built around Mary Louise. In her late 50s, Mary Louise is considered to be mad by the people around her.

As a young girl, she had escaped the dreary farm where she lived with her parents by marrying an older man, Elmer Quarry. But the marriage would soon prove to be a failure and devoid of love. Mary turns to her sickly cousin for the love she’s craved for and who reads Turgenev’s stories to her. When he dies, her love for him doesn’t and she starts projecting herself into Turgenev’s work as a way to keep him alive.

Trevor was born in 1928 in County Cork, Ireland and in his lifetime was shortlisted for the Booker five times. He was also one of those rare 20th century male writers who wrote about the lives and losses of middle-aged men and women — lives that were rarely put in the spotlight by his contemporaries. Both the novellas in Two Lives are a continuation of the themes of trauma and hurt and the stories we tell ourselves to dim our pain. Trevor’s own country’s traumatic history informed his writing, and in its people, he found a rich seam of human experience to mine and turn into unforgettable works of literature.

Trevor’s stories shine with empathy for those who live on the margins and who, more often than not, wouldn’t be considered interesting enough to be the centre, the beating heart of their own narratives. Books like Two Lives prove how wrong popular imagination often is.

The author is a Bangalore-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

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