The William Trevor Reader: “Torridge”
A couple weeks back, in a write-up on “Mrs. Acland’s Ghosts,” your regular guide through greater Trevoraria noticed the emergence of certain micro-genres: Travel, Irish Gothic, “Person Losing Their Shit at a Party.” To these phyla I’d like to add School Stories, a category that contains this week’s entry, “Torridge,” alongside previously-discussed gems like “The Grass Widows” and “Mrs. Silly.”
Like most of Trevor’s school stories, “Torridge” takes place at a boarding school. Trevor attended (or, per his 1991 memoir-in-sketches, , endured) a handful of boarding schools as a child and later taught at one, and this authorial double exposure informs the story: unlike “Mrs. Silly,” where the narrative
