Love and Summer - a remarkable, heart-rending novel by acclaimed writer William Trevor

''Lingers in the memory as a beautiful meditation on love, belonging and the impossibility of escape'' Observer

''Unbearably moving'' Spectator

It is summer and a stranger has come to quiet Rathmoye. He is noticed by Ellie, the young convent girl, who is married to Dillahan, a farmer still mourning his first wife. Over the long and warm days, Ellie and the stranger form an illicit attachment. And those in the town can only watch, holding their tongues, as passion, love and fate take their inevitable course.

''A portrait of a brackish rural backwater, complete with family tragedy, sexual scandal, a repressed spinster and a half-crazed ancient retainer . . . delicate, elegiac, written with all Trevor''s trademark compassion and understanding'' Daily Mail

''A series of wrenching human dramas, which Trevor depicts with kindness and beautiful delicacy'' Sunday Telegraph

''Brilliant. Trevor is the ultimate Old Master'' Evening Standard

''Beautiful. A flawless work of art'' Independent on Sunday

Readers of The Story of Lucy Gault and Felicia''s Journey will adore Love and Summer. It will also be cherished by readers of Colm Toibin and William Boyd.

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork. He has written eighteen novels and novellas, and hundreds of short stories, for which he has won a number of prizes including the Hawthornden Prize, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime''s literary achievement. In 2002 he was knighted for his services to literature. His books in Penguin are: After Rain; A Bit on the Side; Bodily Secrets; Cheating at Canasta; The Children of Dynmouth; The Collected Stories (Volumes One and Two); Death in Summer; Felicia''s Journey; Fools of Fortune; The Hill Bachelors; Love and Summer; The Mark-2 Wife; Selected Stories; The Story of Lucy Gault and Two Lives.