68 – Ireland – William Trevor – Fools of Fortune – February 2019 – (Score 8.33)


There is  a connection of about 160 years between the Irish village of Lough with its nearby house of Kilneagh, and the splendours of Woodcombe Park in Dorset, in England. All those years ago Anna Woodcombe married William Quinton of Kilneagh. Over the years two more girls from Woodcombe Park married Quintons in Kilneagh.

Slowly we get hints of the problems which began after the First World War in which Irishmen fought alongside Welsh, Scottish and English soldiers, against Germans and their allies.

The narrator is a young boy, Willie, about to go to boarding school. Kilneagh was burned down by the UK protestant militia, the Black and Tans, even though the family is Protestant. The war, and the civil war which raged in Ireland after it, are over. Ireland is independent from the UK. Willies story forms the first part of the book, Marianne’s the rest.

The story goes on through the lives of these people, and those who come after them, up to Willie’s last days, and those of his daughter who never knew him. I gave the book a score of seven.