"Felicia's Journey" by William Trevor (Viking, 1994)

It's a while since I've read Trevor. I left with the impression that too often he was writing-by-numbers, a trait most evident in his novels. There's less of it here than I'd expected. Even so, on p.102 he breaks in with a passage about the homeless. In small doses it's ok - "Some have crawled up scaffolding to find a corner beneath the tarpaulin that protects an untiled expanse.", but the rest of the passage sounds like left-over research that doesn't match the pace or PoVs of the novel. I like the way he does stream-of-consciousness (chapter 19, for example) - I wonder if he's written some non-mainstream stuff.

"After Rain" by William Trevor (Viking, 1996)

Initially I was worried that Trevor, while still coming up with plot and character ideas (this volume has as much variety as previous volumes), was becoming lazy. In too many of the early stories the punch line (the deepening of emotion) is stuck on by the author; something not inconsistent with the observations in the story, but also something not prepared for. The later stories were better though. I liked "After Rain", "Gilbert's Mother", "Lost Ground" and "A Day".