Felicia's Journey: A Novel

Felicia's Journey: A Novel

by William Trevor
Felicia's Journey: A Novel

Felicia's Journey: A Novel

by William Trevor

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Overview

"Perfectly executed and chilling... a sad and oddly moving tale of lost opportunities and misplaced hopes.""—The New York Times

“Trevor was our twentieth century Chekov."—Wall Street Journal


Felicia is unmarried, pregnant, and penniless. She steals away from a small Irish town and drifts through the industrial English Midlands, searching for the boyfriend who left her. Instead she meets up with the fat, fiftyish, unfailingly reasonable Mr. Hilditch, who is looking for a new friend to join the five other girls in his Memory Lane. But the strange, sad, terrifying tricks of chance unravel both his and Felicia's delusions in a story that will magnetize fans of Alfred Hitchcock and Ruth Rendell even as it resonates with William Trevor's own "impeccable strength and piercing profundity" (The Washington Post Book World).

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781101666845
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 01/01/1996
Sold by: Penguin Group
Format: eBook
Pages: 240
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

About The Author
William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He is the author of twenty-nine books, including Felicia’s Journey, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and was made into a motion picture, and The Story of Lucy Gault, which was shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and the Whitbread Fiction Prize. In 1996 he was the recipient of the Lannan Award for Fiction. In 2001, he won the Irish Times Literature Prize for fiction. Two of his books were chosen by The New York Times as best books of the year, and his short stories appeared regularly in the New Yorker. In 1997, he was named Honorary Commander of the British Empire.

Hometown:

Devon, England

Date of Birth:

May 24, 1928

Place of Birth:

Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland

Education:

Trinity College, Dublin, 1950

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

William Trevor has long been hailed as one of the "very best writers of our era" (The Washington Post). In both his short stories and his novels, Trevor manages to shed light on the darkest corners of the human heart. It is no surprise, then, that with Felicia's Journey Trevor uses his gifts as a master storyteller—spare, lyrical prose; a tightly woven story; and finely drawn characters—to turn out this psychological thriller.

 

ABOUT WILLIAM TREVOR

William Trevor is the author of twenty-eight books, which include novels, short story collections, a play, a volume of memoir, and a children's tale. Among his many prizes are a 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Two of his books were chosen by The New York Times as Best Books of the Year. His short stories appear regularly in The New Yorker.

 

AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM TREVOR

Felicia's story is sad, but one that is all too common. Many young, pregnant Irish girls travel to England either to terminate a pregnancy or simply to escape the shame that is visited upon them by their families and communities. There was a very famous and controversial case in 1992 of a fourteen-year-old Irish girl who traveled to England to have an abortion. Did this particular story influence the writing of Felicia's Journey

 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A page-turner marked by brilliant psychological suspense."
The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Perfectly executed and chilling . . . A sad and oddly moving tale of lost opportunities and misplaced hopes."
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A battle for the soul, waged between the forces of good and evil . . . Mr. Trevor shows just how wise and wry and funny and morally astute an observer of the human comedy he is."
—Patrick McGrath, front page, The New York Times Book Review

"A thriller lifted to the level of high art . . ."
Publishers Weekly

"In thirteen novels and eight short-story collections [William Trevor] has shown himself a close observer, a fine stylist, a master psychologist. In Felicia's Journey . . . he brings all these qualities into play, and adds to them a teasing manipulation of the reader's sensibilities, so that the book has the elegant tensions of a high-class thriller."
The New York Review of Books

"One of the very best writers of our era."
—Front page, The Washington Post Book World

Reading Group Guide

An Introduction to
Felicia's Journey

William Trevor has long been hailed as one of the "very best writers of our era" (The Washington Post). In both his short stories and his novels, Trevor manages to shed light on the darkest corners of the human heart. It is no surprise, then, that with Felicia's Journey Trevor uses his gifts as a master storyteller—spare, lyrical prose; a tightly woven story; and finely drawn characters—to turn out this psychological thriller.

Felicia, the unlikely heroine of the story, is a young Irish girl from a strongly conservative Republican family. Having lost her job at the local meat-canning factory, she is forced to stay at home to care for her widowed father, two brothers, and great-grandmother. Just when she begins to lose all hope of escaping the gloom of her existence, a charming man called Johnny Lysaght returns home from England to visit his mother. It doesn't take long for Johnny to seduce the naive and impulsive Felicia. Nor does it take long for him to return to England, leaving Felicia pregnant and with no forwarding address. Once her family discovers her secret, and realizes that the baby's father is a traitor—having joined up with the British Army—Felicia is tossed out of the house and goes to England in search of her lover. It is a quest that will prove futile. Johnny has told her that he works in a lawnmower factory in the Midlands, but it soon becomes clear to everyone but Felicia that he has willfully deceived her.

A combination of innocence and faith keeps Felicia wandering, and ultimately delivers her into the hands of Mr. Hilditch, an outwardly decent man who appears to come to her rescue. But the more benevolent Mr. Hilditch becomes, offering Felicia cups of tea, a meal, and a bed for the night, the more his predatory nature reveals itself. And although the reader slowly realizes that Mr. Hilditch is a monster, planning to add Felicia to his collection of girls in his "Memory Lane," there is something so lonely and pathetic about him that one can't help but feel some compassion for him.

Felicia's journey brings heartache to those around her—her father, heart-sick after denouncing her; Johnny Lysaght, lying on the ground bleeding after being beaten by Felicia's brothers; and even Mr. Hilditch, slipping increasingly into insanity, finally fully aware of the horrors he has committed. In the end, Felicia returns to the streets where she once searched for Johnny Lysaght, alone and homeless, but liberated—from Johnny, from the memory of her dead mother, from her controlling father, and, most of all, from Mr. Hilditch's "Memory Lane."


AUTHOR INTERVIEW
A Conversation with William Trevor

Felicia's story is sad, but one that is all too common. Many young, pregnant Irish girls travel to England either to terminate a pregnancy or simply to escape the shame that is visited upon them by their families and communities. There was a very famous and controversial case in 1992 of a fourteen-year-old Irish girl who traveled to England to have an abortion. Did this particular story influence the writing of Felicia's Journey?

No. As you say, many young Irish girls make journeys quite similar to Felicia's—although she, of course, was far from seeking an abortion.

You often refer to Eamon De Valera in Felicia's Journey and in your other works. What influence did he have on you and do you agree with his vision of Ireland? What role did politics play in your upbringing?

I do agree with De Valera's vision of Ireland, although often my characters either don't understand or wholly misunderstand it. Politics played no part in my upbringing.

Your characters are marked by a certain fatalism. Do you think this is a particularly Irish trait?

I don't think so. I don't think of my characters as being marked in that particular way; some are, some are not, but it never seems to me to be the most vigorous characteristic.

In Felicia's Journey, you depict the world of the homeless with haunting realism and empathy. How did you gain such an understanding of this world?

Observation and, again, imagination.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How does Trevor portray the differences between the English and the Irish landscapes? How does the Ireland Felicia leaves differ from that of De Valera's dream, the Ireland "whose fields would be joyous with the sound of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, with the laughter of comely maidens"?

  2. Trevor never describes what has happened to Mr. Hilditch's girls in "Memory Lane"—Sharon, Jakki, Elsie, and Gaye. What effect does this have on the story? What does this lack of information reveal about Hilditch himself?

  3. What effect does the ending have? Would Felicia have been better off staying in Ireland? Why does she seem to accept her final fate so readily?

  4. Both Hilditch and Felicia are haunted by memories of their mothers. How are both mothers portrayed in the novel? How is each character controlled by these memories?

  5. What is the significance of music in the novel? What does the music Hilditch listens to reveal about him?

  6. What does Hilditch's final visit to the Spa foreshadow? What does the Spa represent?

  7. What ultimately allows Felicia to escape Hilditch's house?

  8. What impression of Johnny Lysaght do we have? How does Trevor portray him?

  9. Is Felicia truly an innocent at the end of the novel, or has she gained a deeper understanding of the hand that fate has dealt her?

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