The William Trevor Reader: “The Death of Peggy Meehan”

This is not a bad story, though somewhat second gear for , which means it’s still very readable and elegantly written. It’s a first-person piece, my feelings about which I have already discussed ad nauseam. The (nameless) narrator details his gray and lonely childhood, the unexpected only child of older parents, intensely religious people who vacation at a relative’s boarding house where priests live. One day, the narrator goes to town with a priest, who takes him to lunch and then to an “adult” Hollywood movie. The experience excites the narrator’s imagination, and he fantasizes about a schoolgirl whom he likes dying the same