It was easy to see why William Trevor is such an acclaimed writer. In his native Mitchelstown yesterday, in the shadows of the Galtee Mountains, he effortlessly painted a picture of the north Cork town and what it meant to him, even though he readily admitted that he had few memories of his early years there.
"I don't remember Mitchelstown," began the 76-year-old short story writer and novelist. "I was three when I left here but I have a few memories that might belong here - they are hardly worth mentioning, fragments of sunshine on the pram which possibly was some place else, a black farm gate some place that I've always associated with Mitchelstown."
Speaking at the unveiling of a sculpture in his honour in the square, Mr Trevor said he was deeply grateful to the members of the Mitchelstown Heritage Committee for their decision to commemorate him with such an impressive piece, which was cast in the form of a lectern with an open book featuring an image of him and a quote about his role as a story teller.
And very briefly he gave his audience of about 150 people a glimpse of his prowess as a story teller. He recalled that his father, James Trevor, worked in the Bank of Ireland and, as a consequence, the family led a nomadic existence that brought them from north Cork to Youghal and Skibbereen, Tipperary and Enniscorthy, Portlaoise and Armagh, and finally Galway.
"Still in all our wanderings, Mitchelstown persisted - all through my childhood because every Christmas a Mitchelstown farmer called Ned Quinn sent us a turkey wrapped in brown paper, tightly tied with good strong string, it never failed to arrive - my father had lent him money to buy a field and he never forgot it," Mr Trevor explained.
"I said to my father once, 'Isn't it kind of Ned Quinn to send us a turkey?', and he said: 'Ah, that's Mitchelstown for you'. And someone driving through Mitchelstown may see what you've put up in my honour and maybe he'll say to me, 'Did you see what they did for you in Mitchelstown - isn't it good of them?' And I'll be able to say: 'Ah, that's Mitchelstown for you - that's Mitchelstown people all over'."
Earlier Cappoquin-born poet Tom McCarthy - who unveiled the bronze piece of sculpture by Eithne Ring and Liam Lavery - praised William Trevor for his ability to depict the human character and its survival in often the most bleak of circumstances, in stories such as The Ballroom of Romance, The Piano Tuner's Wives and Honeymoon in Tramore.
"We should always return to individual stories by you, stories that are intimate and deep, making peripheral lives blaze up in front of us as if someone had thrown petrol on a smouldering fire," said Mr McCarthy as he outlined the writer's literary career and his 16 years spent as a sculptor.
The heritage committee chairwoman, Ms Mary Healy, said: "It is a day we will cherish for the rest of our lives."
