"The Children of Dynmouth" by William Trevor

Dynmouth is a seaside resort gearing up for Easter Saturday which is the date of the Church Fete. Timothy Gedge, whose father has left his mother, fantasises about winning the Fete talent show with a comedy sketch based on the Brides in the Bath murders but he needs curtains, a suit, a bath and a wedding dress. Fortunately he the secrets of a number of the other residents of Dynmouth. Thus begins a series of cajoleries and blackmails, causing distress around the town. Is he possessed by devils as Kate believes and can the local Vicar stop him?

A charming portrait of the real life behind the pretty facade of a sleepy seaside town.

Selected quotes:

• "The souls of the adult people have shrivelled away: they are as last year's rhubarb walking the streets." (C 1)
• "You must stick to your guns even though the joints on the left side of your body were giving you gyp. It was sticking to your guns that had made England, once, what England once had been. Nowadays it was like living in a rubbish dump." (C 3)
• "The sea slurped over green rocks, at the bottom of the promenade wall. It was beginning to go out again, calmly withdrawing, as though trained." (C 7)
• "The sea was calm. No breeze disturbed the budding magnolias or the tree mallows, or the azaleas for which the garden was noted.  ... In their favourite morning resting place, warm in the sunshine by the summer-house, the setters reclined with dignity, like sleepy lions." (C 8)
• "God's world was not a pleasant place ... God's world was cruel, human nature took ugly forms." (C 11)
• "How could he say that there was only God's insistence, even though He abided by no rules Himself, that His strictures should be discovered and obeyed?" (C 11)
• "How could he say that God was all vague promises, and small print on guarantees that no one knew if He ever kept?" (C 11)
• "There was a pattern of greys, half-tones and shadows. People moved in the greyness and made of themselves heroes or villains, but the truth was that heroes and villains were unreal." (C 11)
• "It wasn't easy for him, having to accept that God permitted chance, and more than it was easy for him to be a clergyman in a time when clergymen seemed superfluous." (C 11)

In 1976, this novel won the Whitbread Novel award and was nominated for the Booker Prize.

October 2019; 189 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God