The Children Of Dynmouth

A lonely teenager becomes a sinister presence in a small English coastal town in this compelling character study from William Trevor. "A small masterpiece of understatement... a work of rare compassion" (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times).

A pretty West Country seaside town is harshly exposed by a young boy’s unnerving curiosity and unwelcome attention. Timothy Gedge is a strangely unsettling 15-year-old loner who spends much of his time watching people, peering in windows and listening to private conversations. His prurient interest, oddly motivated, leaves few people unaffected - and the consequences cannot be ignored.

"In his 'unspoilt' English coastal village Trevor has planted the most insidious of bad seeds—an adolescent of a curious, arrested innocence who focuses the ache of the castaway child he was into a terrible revenge... Trevor's quiet, morning-light prose picks up every crease on the modest configurations of predators and victims, and with agile irony pursues the "waste and destruction" within an ostensibly civil society."  -  Kirkus Reviews

William Trevor was a renowned writer of short stories.  His novels won numerous awards, including the Hawthornden Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Four of his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize. In 1999 he received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime’s literary achievement, and in 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature.