The William Trevor Reader: “Broken Homes”
“Broken Homes” is another entry in the “old person befuddled by increasingly chaotic events” genre, a la “The Penthouse Apartment” and “The Hotel of the Idle Moon.” Mrs. Malby, 87, lives alone over the grocery store previously owned by her husband, who died five years ago. Her two sons died in World War II, and it is Mrs. Malby’s modest goal to live out the rest of her years in the apartment with her two budgies—more expressly, to avoid being labelled as senile and moved into an old-person’s home.
We begin the story with Mrs. Malby enduring a visitation from an unnamed teacher from Tite Comprehensive School, a man who runs a program for students from “broken homes,” a phrase, seems incapable of introducing Jewish characters, however sympathetic they are, and the Kings sympathetic, without making a bit of a fuss about their Judaism). The Kings sort the problem out for Mrs. Malby as best they can, but her kitchen is still all wrong, a price she must accept to avoid a fuss that might land her in the dreaded Sunset Home in Richmond.
