“She’s not the full shilling”: insanity and redemption in William Trevor’s Reading Turgenev"

Throughout his œuvre, William Trevor frequently explores the disorders of the human mind, with his Irish writings often depicting deviance, mental illness, and madness as responses to suffering and loss. In Reading Turgenev (1991), this focus is embodied in Mary Louise Dallon’s presumed madness, which shapes both the novella’s themes and its narrative structure. Partly set in 1950s Ireland – a period marked by peak asylum confinement – the novella critiques institutionalisation through narrative delirium and multifocal storytelling, unfolding like a mosaic rather than following a linear chronology. Through an examination of how insanity disrupts the linear concept of time, the intertextual connections to Turgenev’s writings, and the influence of Mary Louise’s experiences on her perceptions and thoughts, this article suggests that Trevor’s novella slides between the phenomenological and the realist, presenting a heroine who oscillates between madness and redemption.