Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in the year it was published, this short novel examines Irish-English relations on the intimate scale of family life. Two “great houses,” Woodcombe Park in Dorset, England, and Kilneagh in County Cork, Ireland, have become interconnected through three marriages over 160 years, and although the English house thrives as a historical ornament, Kilneagh lies in ruins. Each property is emblematic of the effect that strife in Ireland has had on the two countries, leaving England largely untouched while parts of Ireland lie razed to the ground.

Trevor constructs his narrative by means of two first-person narratives embedded in an anonymous third-person frame narration. Most of the story comes from Willie Quinton, great-grandson of the first English lady of Woodcombe Park to marry into Kilneagh, and the son of the second English lady to do so. Willie tells the story of his life, which includes many happy days at home or at his father’s mill. All of this happiness, however, is wiped away by an act of cruel vengeance against Kilneagh and its inhabitants committed by the soldiers of the “Black and Tans”—English troops stationed in Ireland to quell the revolt that ultimately led to Irish independence.

Willie remembers, as a small boy, meeting the great hero of that war, Michael Collins, in his father’s study. Although the Quintons have a strong English connection, they pay a terrible price for their hospitality to Collins and for other events beyond their control; Mrs. Quinton never recovers from the shock, sinking into genteel alcoholism and neglecting everything around her, including her son.

When Willie’s maternal aunt comes to check on her sister, bringing along her daughter, Marianne, the two young people form a close bond. Marianne becomes the second narrator, and so some of the events of Willie’s narration are revisited from Marianne’s perspective. But her own story broadens the context as she relates information about her life in the rectory—her father presides over the Woodcombe Park parish—and her schooling in Switzerland.

At the point in the narrative when events should draw Willie and Marianne into the third generation of connections between the two great houses, they are instead torn apart. Marianne finds herself alone in the world and finally accepts a refuge at Kilneagh, but Willie’s actions in the meantime have cut him off from his home and his homeland, possibly forever.

These two stories nest together within the framework of an omniscient narrator’s comments. This nameless narrator provides the introductions to each portion of first-person narration; more important, the life of Imelda, the child of Willie and Marianne, is made available in these parts of the text. By using this technique of mixing first- and third-person narrators, Trevor makes his novel both more intimate and more objective. Readers see Kilneagh through the eyes of those who love it best, but they remain connected to the contemporary world that must cope with the consequences of the past.

Trevor’s novel creates a deeply moving account of the mixed bonds of love and hate that bind together the Irish and the English while also making that connection so painfully corrosive. Every event in the present stands at the end of generations of causes and effects between the English and the Irish; nothing is simple, new, or accidental. Fools of Fortune places the hostile events of the later 20th century into context with the historical background that gave rise to them; however, American readers not familiar with the names and circumstances of the Irish struggle for independence will miss key elements of the story. The pleasures of Trevor’s novel will amply repay the effort expended on background reading to prepare for it.

Bibliography
MacKenna, Dolores. William Trevor: The Writer and His Work. Dublin: New Island, 1999.
Schirmer, Gregory A. William Trevor: A Study of His Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1990.