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 First edition | |
| Author | William Trevor |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | 1 January 1991 |
| Publication place | Ireland |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover &Paperback) |
| Pages | 384 pp (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 978-0-670-83933-9 |
| OCLC | 23384714 |
Two Lives (1991) consists of a pair ofnovellas byIrish writerWilliam Trevor and published as a single book. The volume is composed ofReading Turgenev andMy House in Umbria.
Reading Turgenev deals with the life of Mary Louise Dallon, a farm girl from southeasternIreland who marries an olderdraper named Elmer Quarry. Her marriage remains unconsummated, in part due to the growingalcoholism of her husband. She falls in love with her invalid cousin Robert, who introduces her to the works of great Russian writers (includingIvan Turgenev). She eventually goes mad and structures her life around preserving the existence of Robert to the finest detail possible, including re-creating his room and possessions in her attic.
InMy House in Umbria, the first-person narrator, a retired prostitute and madam, now a writer of romantic novels, recollects a brief period when she sheltered in herUmbrian retirement villa three fellow survivors of a terrorist attack on an Italian passenger train. The novella has been made into a made-for-television film, also entitledMy House in Umbria, which departs substantially from the somber plot of the original.
Reading Turgenev was shortlisted for theBooker Prize in 1991.[1]
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