“‘No matter what,’”
Julia had said, aware then of what was coming, ‘let’s always play cards.’ And
they did; for even with her memory gone, a little more of it each day—her
children taken, her house, her flowerbeds, belongings, clothes—their games in
the communal drawing room were a reality her affliction allowed.”
A husband sits in Harry's Bar in Venice, thinking of his wife—lost to
him now—whose plea has brought him back to one of their favorite haunts. On
another table, a young couple quarrel. “Cheating at Canasta” is the title work
of William Trevor's new collection of twelve stories, his first since the
highly acclaimed A Bit on the Side. From a chance encounter between two childhood friends to
memories of a newly widowed man to a family grappling with the sale of
ancestral land, Trevor examines with grace and skill the tenuous bonds of our
relationships, the strengths that hold us together, and the truths that
threaten to separate us.
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