Publisher's Synopsis
This collection of twelve short stories by William Trevor explores the emotional limits of ordinary people in Ireland's cities and countryside masked under a measured daily routine, manifested in the way that everyone is caught, willingly or unwittingly, in a web of fate and desire, where a step back means loss and a step forward comes with a price. So there seems to be a continuing theme running through these 12 stories - everyone is a prisoner of life. Whether it's the backstabbing couple who are fooled by the gold master but are grateful for the shackles, or the unruly prodigal son who carries the guilt of a past life and refuses to be sensitized by money; whether it's the female painter who has been imprisoned by the illusion for her whole life, and quietly buried her first love in her ignorance, or the parasite father who whored out the world and lived as the benefactor of the world, in the process of tracing the roots of the author's wounds to the characters' pains in this book, the readers will find out that Under every iceberg in the world is a flame, and a bullet can be fired from every tender eye.
