Download The Old Boys fb2, epub

by W Trevor

ISBN: 0370105915
Author: W Trevor
Language: English
Publisher: The Bodley Head; 1st Edition edition (1964)
Pages: 191
Category: Contemporary
Subcategory: Literature
Rating: 4.2
Votes: 127
Size Fb2: 1783 kb
Size ePub: 1228 kb
Size Djvu: 1715 kb
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W Trevor Contemporary English

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His subsequent novels won numerous prizes, including the Hawthornden Prize, the Heinemann Fiction Prize and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award.

His subsequent novels won numerous prizes, including the Hawthornden Prize, the Heinemann Fiction Prize and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award. He was a three-times winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, for The Children of Dynmouth (1976), Fools of Fortune (1983) and Felicia’s Journey (1994), and was also shortlisted four times for the Booker Prize. His last novel was Love and Summer (2009). Trevor was also an acclaimed writer of short stories. His complete output was collected into two hardcover volumes by Viking Penguin in 2009.

Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at. .ISBN: 978-0-241-96926-7. William Trevor, The Old Boys. Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.

Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global. First published by The Bodley Head 1964. Published in Penguin Books 1966. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

The Old Boys by William Trevor - a novel of power, revenge, love and the failure of love from one of the world's best writersA group of septuagenarians revive schoolboy conflicts in the election of the President of the Old Boys Association. Jaraby expects to get the job, but he reckons without the bitterness of Nox, who still remembers the humiliations of his school years.

The Old Boys is a comic novel written by Anglo-Irish author William Trevor, first published in 1964

The Old Boys is a comic novel written by Anglo-Irish author William Trevor, first published in 1964. The story concerns a group of elderly men on the board of a society for the old boys of an unnamed English public school and the power politics and old rivalries that come into play during the election of a new president for the Old Boys Association.

The Old Boys Paperback – June 1, 1996. As in other Trevor novels, beneath the humor there’s a secret vicious crime that will settle the argument about where the son goes. by. William Trevor (Author). Find all the books, read about the author, and more. Are you an author? Learn about Author Central. Two more lines I liked: Everything happens in middle age.

The Old Boys was William Trevor's acclaimed first novel. It will be enjoyed by fans of The Story of Lucy Gault and Felicia's Journey, as well as readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd

The Old Boys was William Trevor's acclaimed first novel. It will be enjoyed by fans of The Story of Lucy Gault and Felicia's Journey, as well as readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd. William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lived in England for many years.

Authors: Trevor, William. The Old Boys (Paperback). William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written many novels, and has won many prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His most recent novel Love and Summer was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He is also a renowned writer of short stories, and his two-volume Collected Stories was published by Viking Penguin in 2009.

The wryly entertaining debut novel of old grudges and petty power struggles from the Whitbread Award–winning author of Love and Summer (The New York Times). Graduates of an elite English public school, the septuagenarian members of the Old Boys Association have convened in London to decide who shall be their next president. Mr. Jaraby has been proposed, and unless there is an objection from his circle of peers, he will assume the position automatically.

The Old Boys by William Trevor - a novel of power, revenge, love and the failure of love from one of the world's best writers. A group of septuagenarians revive schoolboy conflicts in the election of the President of the Old Boys Association.

The Old Boys

Comments:

Ironrunner

Victims of abuse at a boarding school remain dysfunctional many years later, and one takes a convoluted revenge on a tormentor.
I came to this because, although I'm a great admirer of Trevor I find something gloomy about his work and this one was recommended as funny. It is funny, but in the darkest of ways. I notice that others have used the words "gruesome" and "mordant" which are certainly appropriate. "Sick" would be another word. Children commit suicide, or are sexually molested or beaten. A cat's eye is torn out by a rat. A woman kills the cat to spite her husband.
Some of the humor comes from characters talking to each other with exaggerated formality. It's trick borrowed from Ivy Compton-Burnett and sometimes these dialogues and speeches go on too long and the joke palls. Otherwise it's impeccably writtem by a master of the English language.

Mala

Excellent reading.

Sorryyy

This highly praised novel is a great disappointment. What has been touted as comic
is painfully cruel; what has been touted as satiric falls flat is just mean. A great big
disappointment.

Qag

As the title implies, one focus of the story is on a group of elderly men, all graduates of the same boys’ school, who meet to pass the time, plan reunions and talk about donating piddling amounts to the school. As they reminisce about their trials and tribulations at the school, we are reminded that the British boys school system seems design to maximize bullying and intimidation and to terrify the smaller, timid, bookish, weaker boys.

The system seems to have worked well for the main character since he still admires an older boy (now dead) who abused and bullied him. He sent his son to the same school and it didn’t work out: “It ruined him.” One good line: “The world is the School gone mad.” But his wife gets the last word when she asks, more or less, why do MEN make such a fuss about their old school antics decades ago? A of women went to girls’ schools and they don’t constantly relive that past. Maybe for the men it serves this purpose: “Come now, how shall we prove we are not dead?” Or this: “He would have liked to have written his memoirs, but he knew there was nothing to write. ‘The tragedy, he sighed, of those who come into their own too late.’ ”

A second theme is the onset of the problems of old age. The main character wants to be the next president of this Alzheimer-tending group. While their babbling and occasional confusion is served up with humor and we laugh, sometimes it gets serious, as when the groups convinces one of the men that he is engaged to a woman and he panics, thinking it is true.

Perhaps the main theme is that of a marriage of mutual animosity and constant bickering of husband and wife. They never have a civil word with each other. They argue about how he wastes his time fooling with the old school; his vicious cat, and the relative merits of things like canned Australian fruit. Mostly they argue about bringing their estranged son home to live with them. The son is barely surviving on his own; hitting people up for money in the parks. His mother wants to bring him back to their home, but the father won’t allow it.

As in other Trevor novels, beneath the humor there’s a secret vicious crime that will settle the argument about where the son goes.

Two more lines I liked:

“Everything happens in middle age. One is old and young at the same time.”

“You start with one worry, you settle it in your mind; and then there’s another.”

This is Trevor’s first novel that he was proud of, published in 1964 when he was 36. I say this because he wrote ‘A Standard of Behavior’ 6 years earlier but later disowned it and refused to have it reprinted.

Wanenai

Read two John Le Carre thrillers situated in minor public schools, but most modern UK authors seem to have attended alternative school types. Found this re-issue of a 1965 novel an eye-opener about the English public school system and its lasting effects on the psyche of boys spending five years there, subject to fagging (serving pupils two years ahead), caning and all manner of intimidation and hardship. For centuries it has produced future UK top politicians, academics and entrepreneurs, but also victims, pupils forever cowed by the experience.
WT’s wonderfully -intriguing novel focuses on alumnae of a 500 year-old institution. Its key values are laid out in the first chapter by its late, legendary housemaster HL Dowse and his best enforcer and lifelong advocate of his philosophy, Mr. Jaraby, who aged 72, hopes to become the next President of the Committee governing the Association of Old Boys. WT closely follows the other Committee men during a sweltering summer in short chapters: Mr.Turtle, Mr.Cridley, Mr.Sole, Mr. Nox and others.
WT writes that middle age is frightful, having to worry about one’s children and aging parents. Once turned early 70’s, men are more carefree, but still harbouring hopes and ambitions, small in some, substantial in others... A pleasure to read, written in terse and exact, understated middle class English, it describes the mindsets of 70-72 year olds in an English setting and reminded me occasionally of Georges Simenon’s “The Cat” (1967) and John Banville.