euniceng would rather have it than read it

When I first picked up the short story collection Sunstroke, I was eager to read it.  According to the Guardian quote on the dust jacket, Tessa Hadley was “a rare and startling gem” whose writing was apparently “fantastically subtle, absorbing and insightful.”  Alas, I was sorely disappointed and taught a very good lesson, never judge a book by its cover.  The first story, ‘Sunstroke’, seemed interesting enough, opening with a detailed description of a rundown seaside resort in Bristol; zooming in on the two protagonists, two ordinary housewives living ordinary lives.  One of them feels that something is happening between her and her husband’s best friend and talks to the other woman about it.  They both talk, but come to no conclusion and the banter turns ­­back to the mundane.  Unfortunately, things didn’t get much more interesting beyond this point, despite a spontaneous attempt at depicting a pseudo-lesbian encounter.  Confused?  I was too. This formed the bulk of Hadley’s writing style – lots of telling but not enough showing.  I got a sense that she did not know her characters well enough, and so didn’t quite know how to explain to her readers exactly what was so interesting about them.

In the hands of some other writer, I can imagine Hadley’s focus on the minutiae to be readable.  But in Hadley’s hands, it simply falls flat.

So imagine my surprise, as I slogged through the book and came upon the short story “The Surrogate.”  By this time I was still underwhelmed, and the Surrogate looked no different from the other stories in the collection.  An interesting premise – a girl embarks on an affair with a man at the pub who looks like a lecturer she has fallen in love with – which would probably fizzle out after the first few paragraphs.  Instead, I found myself becoming increasingly absorbed with this girl’s train of thought.  This most likely could be due to the fact that, unlike the other stories, this story was written in the first person. Therefore, Hadley’s tendency to ramble about inconsequential details did not seem out of place.  It also suited the character in question – a young girl confused about and immersed within her own feelings.  The story was refreshingly awkward and well written.  If anything, get hold of this collection for this one short story. Or better yet, Google it and see if you can get a free version from The New Yorker.