The William Trevor Reader: “A Complicated Nature”

Perhaps any story following a masterpiece like would feel like a letdown, but “A Complicated Nature” strikes me as an especially low-energy effort, the Trevor story engine puttering along in first gear or perhaps rolling in neutral down a long drive. All of the usual elements are here: a perverse and/or sexually inexperienced protagonist; an unpleasant encounter with a stranger that reveals home truths to the protagonist and reader alike; a quietly brutal ending that the antisemitism pertains to a particular character, rather than the story as whole. In this case, the antisemite is the titularly-complicated protagonist Mr. Attridge, whose hostility to Jews allegedly derives from the fact that his ex-wife was Jewish. The bigotry is nonetheless unpleasant and feels somewhat recklessly tossed in.