Mrs Eckdorf In O'Neill's Hotel

What tragedy turned O'Neill's hotel from a plush establishment into a dingy house of disrepute? William Trevor sends Mrs Eckdorf to investigate. “A small work of art [that] reaches antic heights” (The New York Times).

A professional photographer comes to Dublin convinced that a tragic and beautiful tale lies behind the facade of a crumbling hotel. As Mrs Eckdorf investigates her wild theory, determined to uncover and photograph an imagined tragedy, the reader instead discovers a host of unique and vivid characters who frequent the hotel, as they reveal their real hopes, dreams and poignant disappointments to the elderly, deaf-mute owner.

“An astounding richness of pathos, humour and tragedy.”  —  Francis King

"Mr Trevor beams in his morality tale this time through a corrosive, middle-aged female photographer among some three-penny urban misfits in Dublin... Not Trevor's best—there's just not enough leaven for the lunatic vision—but it's a full house of believable, likable rogues and rabble, with an unexpected joker."   -  Kirkus Reviews

William Trevor wrote many novels and 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 William Trevor 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.