William Trevor Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Michael Standen

Critical Essay by Michael Standen

SOURCE: A review of The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, in Stand, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1967, p. 56.

In the following mixed review, Standen discusses the uneven quality of The Day We Got Drunk on Cake.

William Trevor's The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, comes in a jacket so swinging and irrelevant that one is eventually forced to the conclusion that there was a muddle in Bodley Head's design cloakroom. Mr. Trevor's characters are in fact mostly ageing and/or lonely—certainly characters of England before the Flood. There are twelve stories of middle-class life—nearly all the private tragedies of people who would expect to keep up appearances but whose lives have dipped wildly and uncontrollably beneath the surface.

Often objects (an antique table, the furnishings of a luxury penthouse) play a crucial part and this may be generally true of the short story form which forces a writer...
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