SEDUCED AND ABANDONED

By Paul Gray

An innocent young Irish girl is seduced and later finds herself in a family way. Rather than face the anger of her father and brothers and the contempt of her friends and neighbors, she runs away to search for her lover, who has departed without leaving a precise forwarding address. This tale, of course, has had many tellings; it's hard to think of an Irish writer who hasn't tackled it. Yet in Felicia's Journey (Viking; 213 pages), William Trevor makes his heroine's plight and flight seem entirely original. Which is exactly the way it appears to Felicia, who has never had to deal with the sorts of problems that overwhelm her now. What is an unmarried pregnant girl to do? Where is her Johnny, who told her he loved her? During his visit home to see his mother, when the affair occurred, he said something about working in sales at a lawn-mower factory near Birmingham, England, so that is where she goes. But no one can tell her where such a factory might be. And almost the first person she asks proves to be an unfortunate choice. Mr. Hilditch, a heavy, middle-aged catering supervisor, takes a dangerous interest in this lost, desperate girl, just as he has in others like her who were unfortunate enough to bump into him in the past.

In the hands of a lesser writer, such a premise might be played simply for suspense and shock. There is plenty of both in Felicia's Journey, but Trevor grounds his effects in utterly plausible details; potential terror seems more terrible when its source is the ordinary.

The story is told as both Felicia and Mr. Hilditch experience it, and these alternating points of view not only enhance suspense but also illuminate character. Felicia does not know that while searching for her lover she has become prey to someone else. As she thinks back to the romantic interlude that caused her current dilemma, she cannot--or will not--see how badly used she has been by the father of her unborn child.

For his part, Mr. Hilditch seems uneasily enigmatic, even to himself. He lives in a substantial house he inherited from his mother and maintains an air of jovial respectability with his co-workers. When he recalls the other young women he has befriended, he does not allow himself to think of what happened to them. His interior monologues are conducted in euphemisms. Pondering the arrival of the Irish girl, ``he finds himself exhilarated by the circumstances that have been presented to him, and only regrets that the ordained brevity of this relationship is an element in those circumstances also.''

Trevor is best known as a writer of short stories, and his gifts for compression and a resonant allusiveness do not abandon him over the longer haul of a novel. He makes every one of his words matter; Felicia's Journey is packed with extraordinary passages. Here is a look at the homeless, to whose ranks Felicia has been driven: ``Hidden away, the people of the streets drift into sleep induced by alcohol or agitated by despair, into dreams that carry them back to the lives that once were theirs.'' To take Felicia's journey is to encounter an exemplary guide.