Customer Reviews

Sunstroke and Other Stories

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tessa Hadley's Sunstroke is a marvelous collection of short stories. I can't tell you how many times I pick up a book of stories and just can't get through it for a variety of reasons. Sunstroke was the opposite. These stories are terrific, well-written, witty and thought-provoking. Perhaps the best thing I can say about them is that while reading them, I would come to the last few pages of a story and know, after reading a few, that Hadley had some sort of twist coming, something subtle but still surprising. These stories don't dissappoint. Highly recommended. Enjoy!

Rarely is every story in a collection this good. Hadley's prose is keenly intelligent, her characters are flawed, raw, and vulnerable, and her voice is wonderful: wry and honest, sometimes punitive, always compelling. Truly a collection to savor - these stories will stay with you long after you finish reading them.

These brilliant stories about family relationships are often set with the primary action in the sixties or seventies in provincial England or Wales and with an aftermath in the 21st century. The tales are told from a female point of view and there is something unsatisfactory about the men in their lives. The women, especially the adolescents are shy, clever, self-denigrating and self-sacrificing. There's no major tragedy but a melancholy tinge. Loves are not consummated but sex leads to regret. Even food is not enjoyed and all the beaches are described with distaste. People seldom have a good time unless they drink too much, smoke pot, or are unperceptive jocks. The humor often comes from puncturing the pomposity of pretentious males or poking sly fun at characters who attempt artistic and literary endeavors that are second-rate.
That all sounds a bit negative but these really are superb entertainments, full of great insight and sharp wit.

less than i expected from reviews on Amazon.. but she sees things in a lovely way and paints small poiintillist type portraits.

I agree with the other reviewers and hope you will too! These stories are so good I just want to share them with someone else who will appreciate them as much as I do.

One of the pleasures of reading comes when you discover an author new to you whose stories are so good that you can't wait to read all her others. Tessa Hadley is such a writer. Helen Simpson is another. After reading "Sunstroke" I posted requests for Hadley's three novels on my library's internet request desk.

"Sunstroke," the title story, is a gem, as much of a delight, although composed in an entirely different key, as Kevin Barry's splendid story "Breakfast Wine" which is included in his first collection, "There Are Little Kingdoms"). Here in Santa Fe, as summer turns to fall, there is a moment in the late afternoon when the sun backlights a flower in bloom at just the right angle and intensity to show it in the most fulsome way possible. Tessa Hadley has the gift of our late afternoon sun when it comes to revealing her characters' lives unfolding.

In "Sunstroke," Rachel and Jamie, "both in their early thirties, at that piquant moment of change when the outward accidents of flesh are beginning to be sharpened by character and experience" are at the beach in the southeast of England with their children for a day away from their men. "In order to earn this day in the sunshine. . .how many toiling domesticated days haven't these young mothers put in?" And they intend to make the most of it. Because they are friends, best friends, from way back, Rachel and Jamie have long had the habit of "tell[ing] each other everything, almost everything."

While "neither is exactly unhappy . . .what has built up in them instead is a sense of surplus, of life unlived. Somewhere else . . .there must be another world of intense experiences for grown-ups." And, Hadley tells us, they "half know about themselves how visibly they exude their sexual readiness." The next clue as to what lies ahead comes when, over the hubbub created by their swarming children, Rachel tells Jamie of her growing interest in her husband's friend Kieran, who, as luck would have it, will show up later that day. I'll leave it you, dear reader, to discover the denouement.

Primarily a novelist, Hadley has had this to say about writing short stories:
"I love the irresponsibility of short stories. Writing short, you create with a free hand. Each new development you imagine can be drawn in to the story without consequences, with all the lightning-bolt effect of a first thought, no requirement to elaborate a hinterland." And is she ever good at that.

Endnote: Since "Sunstroke and Other Stories" appeared, The New Yorker has published six of Hadley's stories, most recently "Clever Girl" (June 6, 2011), part of a series of interrelated stories about a young girl named Stella. In due course, "Clever Girl" will appear as part of a novel in much the same way that the interrelated stories in "Lives of Girls and Women" by Alice Munro form a novel. Munro's novel, by the way, also tells the story of one girl's growing up.

Hadley is a genius at taking everyday events and turning them into something moving, memorable and sometimes slightly disturbing. Peripheral characters such as the shy sister in "Buckets of Blood" or the dutiful daughter in "Matrilineal" grow into impressive power players in these skillfully told stories. The only disappointment is "Exchanges", a sketch more than a story.

For me, characters in these stories are verbal portraits with no sharp edges. Often I find myself disengaged when I read writers from "across the pond." But not so with Tessa Hadley. This is one of those beautifully bound little books that this reader did not want to read straight through. Instead I chose to "do" a story a day. I guess my favorite is "Buckets of Blood," somewhat because that is such a great title. And when I got into the story--one about two sisters from a large minister's family--I began to realize that the ending would be what I predicted. But it wasn't. Handled by another writer, these characters would have been all lumped into the category of "dysfunctional," people one would not have wanted to know were they real. But that is not the case with Ms. Hadley's characters. Yet this reader feels no pity either. Her characters accept life and what it offers in a state of unspoken grace. I highly recommend the book. And the reader will love the actual feel of this book as well, providing evidence that Kindle is not all it's cracked up to be!