[Some British authors] abide by conventions of brevity, control, and traditional form without ever sounding like under-reachers. Perhaps the best of these is William Trevor, represented this season by Lovers of Their Time…. One sequence of tales in this book aims at nothing less than a recreation of the stunting impact of two world wars on the mind of a rural village. Two stories grapple, at the level of facts of feeling, with the Ulster anguish as endured by Protestants in the South and by Irish Catholics in England. And the book begins by walking unblinkingly up to the Conflict of Generations (an elderly woman and a gang of cosseted louts from a Comprehensive School) and charging it with genuinely fresh meaning….

[Trevor] has a quiet voice—modest, reserved, delicately inflected. The recurring gesture in this collection is a smoothing of folds—a movement of mind continually asking...