The hill bachelors

William Trevor's new collection of stories is his first since the highly acclaimed After Rain.

It contains a dozen new stories, mostly set in Ireland, that show Trevor at the height of his powers.

With understatement and precision he writes about the lonely and the sad, about those that barely have control over their lives and those who have something to hide.

In 'Three People' a father waits for the proposal for his daughter that will never come; in 'Against the Odds', a con-woman has business that takes her all across the Six Counties; and in the poignant title-story, a youngest son returns home for his father's funeral and stays to run the farm.