Rating: 
Summary: Good basic story, but many flaws
Review: I found the basic idea of the book to be excellent and very true to life, however, I cannot say the same for the characters, Felicia in particular. Beyond her frustration, we are never privy to any of her emotions. What did she think of her plight? Why did she never worry that Johnny, her lover, might reject her? I feel that the author made a mistake by never writing in Felicia's viewpoint during her scenes with Mr. Hilditch. We certainly know many of his feeling and thoughts concerning Felicia, but never, never any of her thoughts about her sinister friend. ... The character of Mr. Hilditch is very well developed, unfortunately more so than the main character. I felt that too much of the book (one quarter) was devoted to Mr. Hilditch's downward spiral. It almost becomes a completely different story. As a previous reviewer mentioned, the author's practice on going back and the forth between past and present was confusing.
Rating: 
Summary: A difficult read...but a great book
Review: I found this book to be a bit difficult to read because of the author's habit of jumping from past to present with no warning at all. I did however find the book to be very exciting and have not been able to get it out of my mind since I finished it. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a suspence and is looking for a change of pace. My only recommendation is to read it slowly to keep from getting confused!
Rating: 
Summary: The Caterer, the Street Preacher, and the Wayward Girl
Review: I must admit that I read this book after having seen Atom Egoyan's stunning film version -- and I had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by it. Fortunately, Trevor's work also sticks in the mind. It is an elegant dance between a self-satisfied gourmand who has a taste for young women whose lives are disordered, luring them into his web ever so slowly and cutting off their lives. Felicia is different from the others in one important respect: She has caught they eye of the benign but determined Miss Calligary, a Jamaican street preacher who strives to "gather in" disturbed souls. Many critics have criticized the character of Felicia for being insufficiently realized. She is like Lena Grove from Faulkner's LIGHT IN AUGUST: Without being a developed character in her own right, her pregnant wanderings and confusion set the evil or craven minds of the people around her in motion. Fortunately, it is Felicia who quite unawares sends Miss Calligary and her "Gatherers" after the startled Hilditch. A book well worth reading from an author whose work I would like to explore in greater detail.
Rating: 
Summary: painfully slow
Review: I saw the movie first, and although I found it excrutiatingly slow, I thought the concept was intriguing. When I found the book at a library sale I thought I'd give it a go. The book was even slower than the movie, and both were lacking any umph at the ending to make up for the laboriously snail like pace. If Trevor's writing wasn't so crisp and clear, I would give this book 2 stars. It isn't as though nothing happens at all, there's conflict, resolution, and plot development, but everything that does occur is unwoven so carefully it's hard to care. I couldn't get in touch with Felicia or Mr. Hilditch (I've spelled his name wrong), both character's felt continually held at an arms length from the page. By the end of the book I was rushing through the final pages, not because I was riveted, but because I wanted to hurry up and finish. The climax is made anti-climatic by tedious pacing. The movie took a lot of liberty in embellishing and ignoring certain details, but neither director nor writer spiced the story up enough. Have someone relay the details to you instead, it will probably be creepier. If you're looking for a slow burner suspense novel that satisfies, read A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell.
Rating:
Summary: A great read by a skillful writer
Review: I was new to William Trevor's work before I bought this book. I was intrigued by the back-cover synopsis, and was encouraged to buy it by my husband, who had read Trevor before and admired his work. Fans of suspense/mystery/crime novels who like their writing smart and literary will really enjoy this book. In a mere 212 pages, Trevor weaves a chilling psychodrama between two intriguing main characters: a pregnant young Irish woman searching the British midlands for her missing boyfriend and a middle-aged Englishman whose appetite for food is only matched by his unhealthy obsession with young runaway women. Trevor's economic descriptions of the scenery already manage to convey the severe depression of these British industrial towns -- a contrast to Felicia's more pastoral, Irish Catholic upbringing -- but not much. If I do have one complaint about the book, it's title is Felicia's Journey, but in the end it focuses more on the male character, Mr. Hilditch, and leaves Felicia's character less defined than I wanted her to be. But this is a small issue. William Trevor is a very fine writer, and this book is such a great introduction to his work, they're even making it into a movie.
Rating:
Summary: Not a thrilling thriller
Review: I wish I could say that I really enjoyed this book. There are so many favorable reviews. I have to wonder if I missed something. I have to say that I had to make myself finish this book. I wanted to find out what happened to the main characters....but I find I was never truly interested in their outcome. Felicia (the main character) in particular was a naive and simple character that lacked any depth at all. One of the reasons that I didn't like the book was simply the authors style. As one reviewer put it, "Trevor's style is internal and introspective, and has an almost Joycean time perspective".Well, that is a clever way to put it. Trevor delves into the main characters pasts while trying to keep you interested in the present storyline. This sounds like a great literary feat. However, it is not a style that I care for. It was supposed to be a true page turner, and a psychological thriller. That is why I picked the book up in the first place. I have read many books that keep me glued to the next page, and books that I cannot read alone in the house. But this book is not one of them. If you are looking for a true thriller about a psychotic, try Mary Higgins Clarks, "Loves Music Loves to Dance"... that is a thriller that will keep you reading. This book will not thrill those who are into "thrillers".
Rating:
Summary: AN UNDERSTATED PORTRAIT OF INNOCENCE AND EVIL
Review: I'll start by admitting that I think William Trevor has few if any equals among contemporary writers -- especially considering his works as a whole. He also appears to just keep getting better and better, and 'Felicia's journey' is a great example of that growth. Trevor's writing is simply luminous -- I can think of no better word to decribe it. His characters all come alive in ways that are extremely rare in modern fiction -- as the reader gets deeper and deeper into the novel, the characters are almost grown before our eyes. We know them before we realize it -- but only at the pace that Trevor controls. His powers of decription are so well-honed and subtle that reading his work is almost like seeing things with our own eyes. In 'Felicia's journey', without having any of the characters' emotions or thoughts rammed down our throats, we are intimately aware of their feelings. We can without question feel the uncertainty and trepidation with which Felicia lives her life -- more one step at a time than one day at a time. Her initial reluctance to allow Mr. Hillditch to help her is incredibly real to us. As for Hillditch himself, the evil contained in his character is revealed like peeling the layers of an onion (and I'm not giving anything more away here than the book jacket...no spoilers). The novel is much more satisfying than the film made of it by Canadian director Atom Egoyan. There are aspects of the story here that the film leaves unexplored, and a richness here that is probably untranslatable to the screen, except in the hands of a master director. If you enjoy tasting the work of an author who is a master at his craft, William Trevor is your cup of tea -- and his short stories are, if possible, even more amazing than his novels. This book is a modern masterpiece, without pretentions or avant-garde experimentaion -- it's simply incredible writing.
Rating:
Summary: A Suspenseful Read
Review: In Felicia's Journey, William Trevor explores an unconventional relationship betwen a young pregnant Irish girl seeking her boyfriend and an established but lonesome man with peculiar and suspect behaviors. To Felicia, Mr. Hilditch becomes a caring fatherly figure who despite the uneasiness that he sometimes produces helps her throughout her search. To Mr. Hilditch, Felicia is a vehicle by which he can relate to an outside world that he has failed at on his own, and only by misdirecting her, can he keep her close enough to buffer his own insecurities. Though Felicia and Mr. Hilditch operate with extremely different motivations, Trevor examines their respective viewpoints based on the despair that fuels both of their troubles. He oscillates between both point of views, uncovering the different sides of fear in Felicia and Mr. Hilditch's relationship. At times, the jumping back and forth can be jarring and distracting, but often it reveals chilling insight into their behavior and creates an unrelenting suspense throughout the story. Trevor has invented a collision between two people from different walks of life, and it is curious that even though their meeting is accidental it may become the determining factor in each of their lives.
Rating:
Summary: A book for grown-ups.
Review: In this superb book, Trevor does what he has done in some of his other novels, especially "Other People's Worlds." Trevor takes the basic elements of what could easily have been a simple thriller, a piece of genre fiction, and elevates it to something much more adult. He should be on the short list for the Nobel Prize.
Rating:
Summary: hypnotic
Review: Irish immigration is a topic that has been dealt with to great lengths in contemporary fiction, but by presenting the subject within the detective genre Trevor manages to treat the idea of alienation from a fresh angle. The character of Felicia is on one level a modern extension of the traditional female symbol of Ireland. The story of Ireland in the twentieth century is one of leaving, and Felicia's quest for acceptance, for love away from Ireland is indicative of this history. Yet the character of Mr. Hilditch cannot be simply accepted as representative of Britain with respect to Ireland. Mr. Hilditch is a study in the idea of the facade. His house, his lifestyle, and even the way that he structures his thoughts are not what they originally seem. Similarly, Felicia's own vision of what she expected to happen in England was remarkably different from reality. Trevor's narrative style is divided between the perspectives of Felicia and Mr. Hilditch. I study Irish history, and specifically Irish nationalism, so while reading this novel I was constantly looking for hidden political messages or references to traditional Irish iconography or depictions of the Anglo-Irish dynamic. I found the task daunting, largely because a reduction of the novel to a 'dependent Ireland - dominant Britain' outline seemed deceptively simple, which is yet another reason why I noted that Trevor's novel looks at the situation from a fresh angle. Ultimately, I think that this novel works best simply as a compelling, well-written mystery novel. To attempt to read too much politics into the narrative is to undermine the elegance of Felicia's innocence or desperation of Mr. Hilditch's pathetic attempts to recreate something that never existed in the first place. This novel should be taken at face value, and as such it functions as a hypnotic and often disturbing mystery.
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