Two Lives

Two Lives

Reading Turgenev & My House in Umbria

Summary

Two Lives: Reading Turgenev & My House in Umbria - two novels by William Trevor

'Evocative and haunting. Trevor writes like an angel, but is determined to wring your heart' Daily Mail

'Marvellous, superb. As rich and moving as anything I have read in years. When I reach the end . . . I wanted to start right again at the beginning' Guardian

In Reading Turgenev an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man, but finds release through secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels.

My House in Umbria tells of Emily Delahunty, a writer of romantic novels, who helps the survivors of a bomb attack on a train to convalesce, inventing colourful pasts for her patients.

Two novels, two women who retreat further into the realm of the imagination until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred . . .

'One of the most beautiful and memorable things Trevor has written' Independent on Sunday

Reading Turgenev was shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Readers of Love and Summer and Felicia's Journey will adore Two Lives. It will also be cherished by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd.

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia's Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.

About the author

William Trevor

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written many novels, and has won many prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His most recent novel Love and Summer was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He is also a renowned writer of short stories, and his two-volume Collected Stories was published by Viking Penguin in 2009. In 1999 William Trevor received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement, and in 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature.
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