“One woman’s life, from childhood to middle age, by Britain’s most acute, perceptive novelist of ordinary lives.
All the qualities that readers praised in The London Train are present in Clever Girl, Tessa Hadley’s brilliant new novel. It follows the story of Stella, from her childhood as the daughter of a single mother in a Bristol bedsit in the 1960s into the mysterious shallows of her middle age. The story is full of drama — violent deaths, an abrupt end to Stella’s schooldays, two sons by different fathers who aren’t around to see the boys grow up — but as ever it is her observation of ordinary lives, of the way men and women think and feel and relate to one another, that dazzles. Yes, you think. This is how it is.”
(I just want to say that I don’t think I would have picked up this book if that had been the blurb on my edition. My blurb was much more enticing: “Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so. Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously,smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. When she meets Val, he seems to embody everything she longs for – glamour, ideas, excitement and the thrill of the unknown. But these things come at a price and one that Stella, despite all her cleverness, doesn’t realise until it is too late.”)
Is it just me that found this a bit of a Jane Eyre rip off? I felt like I was following the tale of a modern day Jane, which by no means is a problem, but it just didn’t wow me. I really enjoyed those first opening chapters but there were some really interesting things that came into view and were just thrown into the background. Like, why bring it up, make it out to be a big thing, and then not include it in the rest of the story? (If you’ve read the book and you’re wondering what I’m on about, it’s that whole tree cult thing Stella and Madeline make up).
And then other things weren’t explained in the depth that they could have. For example, the milk bottle through the window: I don’t even know what happened there, what happened afterwards and what happened leading up to it. I know what I think happened but it’s still not obvious, even after re-reading.
And Hadley just seems to have used symbolism at every opportunity, there are things that just scream ‘Look at my deeper meaning’ and while that is no bad thing, I just feel like she’s been rubbing it in my face a little.
But I did eat this book up quicker than you can say ‘Jane Eyre’ ‘Clever Girl’. The words just came together in gentle waves and my hands refused to put the damn thing down. It was poetic and crafted like an intricate piece of art. Yes, despite myself I am praising this book exceptionally well but I can’t ignore the fact it felt so good on a technical level.
But then I do also hate that ending.
What was I listening to?
The Argle Bargle 