Felicia's Journey

by William Trevor

Book Overview

"Perfectly executed and chilling... a sad and oddly moving tale of lost opportunities and misplaced hopes.""--The New York Times

"Trevor was our twentieth century Chekov."--Wall Street Journal

Felicia is unmarried, pregnant, and penniless. She steals away from a small Irish town and drifts through the industrial English Midlands, searching for the boyfriend who left her. Instead she meets up with the fat,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140253602
• ISBN13: 9780140253603
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

TREVOR, A COMMANDER OF LUMINOUS PROSE

Here he is again, that commander of luminous prose William Trevor. With this, his 13th novel, the master has some surprises in store as his unparalleled accounting weaves a psychological thriller. Felicia, whose appearance is deemed "nun like" is the only daughter of an impoverished Irish gardener. She leaves the home where she cooks, cleans and tends to an elderly grandmother to find the boy she loves, Johnny. Knowing only that he works in a lawn mower factory somewhere in the English Midlands, she embarks on her fateful journey. Unable to locate the factory, let alone Johnny, she is befriended by Mr. Hilditch, a portly catering manager with a penchant for pop tunes from the 50s, a portrait gallery of strangers decorating his walls, and a black past. Mr. Hilditch follows her, assures her dependence upon him by stealing her money, and eventually takes her into his home. Trevor's brilliant narrative skills are showcased as he weaves the story with flashbacks, revelations of his characters' thoughts, and displays of their dreams. As always, he is articulate and compassionate, bringing his shuddery thriller to the zenith of a conclusion.

AN UNDERSTATED PORTRAIT OF INNOCENCE AND EVIL

I'll start by admitting that I think William Trevor has few if any equals among contemporary writers -- especially considering his works as a whole. He also appears to just keep getting better and better, and 'Felicia's journey' is a great example of that growth.Trevor's writing is simply luminous -- I can think of no better word to decribe it. His characters all come alive in ways that are extremely rare in modern fiction -- as the reader gets deeper and deeper into the novel, the characters are almost grown before our eyes. We know them before we realize it -- but only at the pace that Trevor controls. His powers of decription are so well-honed and subtle that reading his work is almost like seeing things with our own eyes.In 'Felicia's journey', without having any of the characters' emotions or thoughts rammed down our throats, we are intimately aware of their feelings. We can without question feel the uncertainty and trepidation with which Felicia lives her life -- more one step at a time than one day at a time. Her initial reluctance to allow Mr. Hillditch to help her is incredibly real to us. As for Hillditch himself, the evil contained in his character is revealed like peeling the layers of an onion (and I'm not giving anything more away here than the book jacket...no spoilers).The novel is much more satisfying than the film made of it by Canadian director Atom Egoyan. There are aspects of the story here that the film leaves unexplored, and a richness here that is probably untranslatable to the screen, except in the hands of a master director.If you enjoy tasting the work of an author who is a master at his craft, William Trevor is your cup of tea -- and his short stories are, if possible, even more amazing than his novels. This book is a modern masterpiece, without pretentions or avant-garde experimentaion -- it's simply increible writing.

Complex, subtle, brilliant

This book is brilliantly written. And it focuses on the character it's meant to focus on... regardless of the title. What it did for me, (which so few books do) is let me do the work. It let me play psychologist and investigator. It let me analyze the characters. It let me decide who was pitiable, and why, and who was sinister, and why. It let me see the conception, so to speak, of a "lost" soul. Ever wonder.. truly wonder... how the depraved got that way? Or those that reject society and end up rooting through bins for sustenance? What events led to it? It also struck me that how and what one ate, in the book, signified almost how they viewed life and people, whether they were a rejector or a hoarder. Mr. Hilditch, a hoarder, with a house full of objects from his past and other people's pasts, also a hoarder of young girl's souls, kept a stocked cupboard, and ate with great gusto. And Felicia, all her belongings fitting in a couple bags, eats hardly at all, (sp.) and ends up rooting through rubbish bins after "rejecting" her unborn child and basically the whole of society.

The serial killer as protagonist

The most disturbing novels about murderers are the ones where the reader inhabits the killer's mind and comes to know and, in a sense, understand him. Such is the case with `Felicia's Journey', a novel that treads a very fine line between sympathy and disgust for both main characters, Felicia, a young girl looking for the father of her unborn child and Mr. Hilditch, a refined and courteous catering manager, who sets about to befriend her. Her initial innocence and snivelling about her condition, though understandable, is grating, while the friendly and gentle Mr. Hilditch, although we (and Felicia) should know better, is the more interesting and thoughtful character. What's at once troubling and fascinating about the novel is this general lack of sympathy for Felicia and the feeling that Hilditch just `can't be that bad.' I'm sure Trevor has constructed the narrative this way in order to unsettle the reader, and it works. I can't divulge one of the most intriguing aspects of the novel, other than to say, growing self-awareness is not always a good thing. I'm reminded of Hannibal Lecter, another likable bad boy. However, Lecter is great fantasy while Mr. Hilditch is the much more realistic and believable character. You know he's living just around the corner. This novel is beautifully written and unusual in every sense. I can guarantee the next novel you pick up will read like lead. Best to wait a while, and let Mr. Hilditch swirl around in your head like a fine wine gone vinegar.