“She came out of the blue cottage and ran out at cars.”
The story (and collection) responsible for seducing me to the form, beguiled and astonished as I was by Trevor’s ellipses and obliquity, how less could be so much more (than the bloated novels I was growing weary of). A young Irish mechanic is hired to drive a pair of credulous Spanish tourists on a pilgrimage to a statue, the Virgin of Pouldearg, after they hear rumours – furnished by a man in a bar they buy drinks – of it miraculously weeping. The events that follow chart a forlorn yet poignant course, navigating guilt, self-delusion and penitence, the sheer serendipity of the trials that befall us. Life’s path in Trevor’s stories often alters in a heartbeat, a moment of recklessness, a quiet betrayal. And yet, as here, tragedy can also birth hope. The audacious arc of this piece still astonishes me.
First published in The New Yorker, October 2004, and available to subscribers to read here; collected in Cheating at Canasta, Penguin Books, 2007
A Personal Anthology 