"Other People's Worlds," by William Trevor … is a shorter, more efficient novel than [Iris Murdoch's] "Nuns and Soldiers," but bears some resemblances. It, too, has for a heroine a widow who marries a young man financially beneath her, and it, too, demonstrates that such a union, however rashly contracted, cannot be lightly undone. Julia Ferndale, like [Murdoch's] Gertrude Openshaw, is plump but still handsome; like Anne Cavidge, she undergoes a struggle with religious doubt. Catholicism haunts both books, and both are at their best showing different social worlds impinging, with painful and revelatory effect…. Like Miss Murdoch, Mr. Trevor was born in Ireland, and he brings to the anthropology of their adopted England an affectionate and attentive outsider's eye…. [While] he is not the international star she is, Mr. Trevor has a solid reputation in Great Britain and a growing one [in America]. "Other People's Worlds" surely will...