The Hill Bachelors

William Trevor has long been hailed as the master of the short story. His new collection, The Hill Bachelors, is an elegant, heartbreaking book about men and women and their missed opportunities. Here we meet four people in a small suburban house, whose lives are frozen in a conspiracy of silence that precludes love's consummation; a nine-year-old who harbors a dream that a movie part will end her fragmented family life; a brother and sister who must forge a new life amid the terrible beauty of …