So here is one of my favourite authors and the book that brought him to me.

'After Rain' by William Trevor.

What is it about the Irish? Is it just the gift of being Irish that enables Trevor to write the way he does?

This collection of short stories fell into my heart the way looking at an Irish landscape does...his words falling softy into me as gently as drops of Irish rain on a green pasture, yet the effects are heart wrenching. He knows how to write about the depths of a human heart.

There is beauty in suffering, suffering has meaning, and this is what I believe Trevor knows and writes about.

William Trevor on writing...

"To me writing is entirely mysterious. If I didn't believe it was a mystery, the whole thing wouldn't be worthwhile.

I don't know not just how something is going to end, but what the next couple of lines are going to be".