SOURCE: "A Thunder of Hooves in the Drawing Room," in The Hudson Review, Vol. 47, No. 4, Winter, 1995, pp. 655-60.

In the following review, Krist argues that if readers give Excursions in the Real World a careful reading, they will learn a great deal about the author.

Any rich and active writing life creates by-products—reviews, essays, travel articles, profiles, and other occasional pieces—that accumulate in the odd corners of a writer's opus until they take on substantial heft. If the writer is good enough, these pieces, while perhaps not originally intended to appear between hard covers, may eventually be gathered into a collection and published. If the writer is better than good enough, the collection may even represent a significant literary achievement, the whole cohering despite the varied nature of the parts.

In his latest book, Excursions in the Real World, William Trevor (certainly a writer who can...