William Trevor’s considerable output is extraordinary: such controlled writing, such understanding of the form. By coincidence he went to the school I teach in (under his real name, Trevor Cox), and I wrote a piece about his relationship with that school, a place which often appears in his writing, though not in this masterpiece. ‘The Piano Tuner’s Wives’ has all Trevor’s greatest strengths: such tenderness for the characters and their frailties, such skill in ranging across so many years in so few pages. What elevates it to greatness is the moment near the end when the second wife realises what direction she can go in, and the piano tuner tacitly lets her do this, with understanding, grace and generosity. You can see the realisation dawn in the classroom.
First published in The New Yorker, October 1995, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in After Rain, Viking, 1996
A Personal Anthology 