Tessa Hadley's story collection, "Bad Dreams," was among the very best books published last year, though I'm not sure many people read it. Here's how the first story starts:
Jane Allsop was abducted when she was fifteen, and nobody noticed. This happened a long time ago, in Surrey, in the sixties, when parents were more careless. She was home from boarding school for the summer, and day after day the sun rose into a cloudless sky, from which Jane couldn't unfix the word "cerulean," which she'd learned in the art room. (She wasn't clever or literary, and was nervous of new words, which seemed to stick to her.) "Cerulean" was more of a blank, baking glare than mere merry blue. It prised its way each morning like a chisel through the crack between Jane's flowered bedroom curtains and between the eyelids she squeezed tightly shut in an effort to stay in her dreams. It wasn't acceptable in Jane's kind of family to complain about good weather....
So much of Hadley's work is contrarian. The protagonist is *not* a Belle-like striver, longing to move beyond this provincial world. The protagonist is in fact provincial, not imaginative, not interested in broadening her horizons but just hoping to consume some trashy fiction. A beautiful day can be oppressive. A girl was abducted AND no one noticed. (The two facts sit side by side, bizarrely; we don't get a "though" or an "and yet.") A new word can make you nervous and can "stick" to you. The sky can be like a chisel, prising its way through the crack between your two eyelids. As others have remarked, the world is *alive* in Hadley's fiction--really alive. Colors can assault you. Hadley takes sensual pleasure in just about everything, and you can feel the pleasure jumping up from her sentences.
Real children, somewhere, were wholesomely intent on untying boats or building dams or collecting butterflies to asphyxiate in jars...She should be like them...Or she should be more thoroughly embarked on her teenage self, like some of the girls at school, painting on makeup and then scrubbing it off, nurturing crushes on friends' brothers she'd only ever seen from a distance...Jane knew that these girls were ahead of her on the fated trek to adulthood. Yet theirs seemed also a backward step into triviality...
The self as a voyage to be "embarked on." Butterflies asphyxiated in jars. Have you ever seen any other character contemplating precisely this state of being "stuck," in any other story? Do you feel like you know exactly what Jane is thinking about? It would be enough of a triumph if Hadley wrote so well and so astutely without using plots. But, actually, things *happen* in these stories, as well. A girl imagines she has major romantic power, then discovers she is just a pawn in a game a guy is playing with his actual girlfriend. A very small act of domestic vandalism is misinterpreted--and it reveals a sort-of-shocking and undiscussed fault line in a marriage. A dying woman is suddenly and clumsily assaulted in the middle of a cafe.
Reading Hadley feels like stepping out into the middle of a crowded city: You can't anticipate what will happen. You'll have an idea of where the story will go, and you will be wrong. Over and over. "Bad Dreams" is close to her tenth book; having abandoned a career in teaching, she has become a confident, ever-changing writer. Her gifts get broader and deeper. There's a mix of stories and novels. I'm excited for her Next Big Thing.
Jane Allsop was abducted when she was fifteen, and nobody noticed. This happened a long time ago, in Surrey, in the sixties, when parents were more careless. She was home from boarding school for the summer, and day after day the sun rose into a cloudless sky, from which Jane couldn't unfix the word "cerulean," which she'd learned in the art room. (She wasn't clever or literary, and was nervous of new words, which seemed to stick to her.) "Cerulean" was more of a blank, baking glare than mere merry blue. It prised its way each morning like a chisel through the crack between Jane's flowered bedroom curtains and between the eyelids she squeezed tightly shut in an effort to stay in her dreams. It wasn't acceptable in Jane's kind of family to complain about good weather....
So much of Hadley's work is contrarian. The protagonist is *not* a Belle-like striver, longing to move beyond this provincial world. The protagonist is in fact provincial, not imaginative, not interested in broadening her horizons but just hoping to consume some trashy fiction. A beautiful day can be oppressive. A girl was abducted AND no one noticed. (The two facts sit side by side, bizarrely; we don't get a "though" or an "and yet.") A new word can make you nervous and can "stick" to you. The sky can be like a chisel, prising its way through the crack between your two eyelids. As others have remarked, the world is *alive* in Hadley's fiction--really alive. Colors can assault you. Hadley takes sensual pleasure in just about everything, and you can feel the pleasure jumping up from her sentences.
Real children, somewhere, were wholesomely intent on untying boats or building dams or collecting butterflies to asphyxiate in jars...She should be like them...Or she should be more thoroughly embarked on her teenage self, like some of the girls at school, painting on makeup and then scrubbing it off, nurturing crushes on friends' brothers she'd only ever seen from a distance...Jane knew that these girls were ahead of her on the fated trek to adulthood. Yet theirs seemed also a backward step into triviality...
The self as a voyage to be "embarked on." Butterflies asphyxiated in jars. Have you ever seen any other character contemplating precisely this state of being "stuck," in any other story? Do you feel like you know exactly what Jane is thinking about? It would be enough of a triumph if Hadley wrote so well and so astutely without using plots. But, actually, things *happen* in these stories, as well. A girl imagines she has major romantic power, then discovers she is just a pawn in a game a guy is playing with his actual girlfriend. A very small act of domestic vandalism is misinterpreted--and it reveals a sort-of-shocking and undiscussed fault line in a marriage. A dying woman is suddenly and clumsily assaulted in the middle of a cafe.
Reading Hadley feels like stepping out into the middle of a crowded city: You can't anticipate what will happen. You'll have an idea of where the story will go, and you will be wrong. Over and over. "Bad Dreams" is close to her tenth book; having abandoned a career in teaching, she has become a confident, ever-changing writer. Her gifts get broader and deeper. There's a mix of stories and novels. I'm excited for her Next Big Thing.
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