David, thanks for that fine close reading. Some of those plot issues hadn’t even occurred to me. My impression of the story pretty much lines up with yours. It’s a well-made thing, and Lynette is a fascinating character, one you’re not sure whether to admire or pity by the end. But the premise is well-trod territory, and I’m not sure the depiction of this estranged couple of opposites is all that convincing.

It’s hard for me to read Tessa Hadley without thinking of Alice Munro, to whom Hadley is enormously indebted (a debt she acknowledges, to her credit). But Munro’s gift was to take to the quotidian and make it transcendent. It’s a sublime and singular talent. Hadley never reaches those heights. Her stories are well-written and well-constructed, composed with tact, taste and clarity. They’re admittedly hard to fault, but I mostly find her completely boring. I think this is one of her better efforts, though, for what it’s worth.

This is a sad story of two broken-hearted, emotionally scarred ex-spouses and in that sense, at its bare essentials, I can see why one might call it unoriginal. But it is Headley’s stylistic virtues, the way she uses them to bring us into Lynette’s (and, briefly, Toby’s) inner lives, that makes it outstanding. As Kerouac reportedly said, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” This is beautifully written, whether Lynette is taking in every piece of furniture and other item in Toby’s home or whether either is recalling what each meant, and did, to the other.

I join the consensus that, based on how Toby feels at the end, there is no way he is going to friend her on FB to get her contact info.

I don’t feel that the supposed lack of originality here is a problem. I liked the story because it was a good exploration of ambivalence–both are still scarred yet I’d say both are also doing well enough also. They are bound to think a lot of each other, bound to want to impress each other, but this is how people are and yet they can still be o.k. I don’t think either is in terrible shape. My only problem was what I’d call pointless adjectival description. Is it necessary that trees be “penitential” when the main point is she’s fallen in the rain and won’t cry out for Toby. Similarly, do we need to have his back described as having a “serene unawareness of her”? The description of their bodies both remembering each other naked is whimsical in an irritating way unless one believes in such magic. Nevertheless, I was fond of this story and am in general a (moderate) fan of Hadley’s work.

One aspect of the story that interested me, and that ties in to the discussion of originality (more about that below), is the initial appearance of Toby. There is a physical recklessness about the way he behaves – “A man came pushing through the crowd from behind her, accidentally striking her hard with his shoulder as he passed.” So here we have this stranger, pushing people (not just Lynette; he is pushing through the crowd), colliding with Lynette with such force that she loses her balance and hurts herself. He doesn’t care or possibly even notice. His behavior is borderline brutal and it seems to continue after the collision: he is “forging on through the crowd [perhaps continuing to push others aside?], oblivious of any trouble he’d left in his wake.” When Lynette shouts after him, he doesn’t respond, leading her to “push[ ] furiously herself” through the crowd to gain on him. The use of “herself” reinforces the image that the stranger, too, has been “pushing furiously” even after he’s gotten past Lynette
.
As a reader I’m feeling a sense of potential danger from him, wondering if he is an ordinary man who is having a bad day or someone who behaves this way habitually, which would suggest a lot of anger. I wondered and worried about what would happen to Lynette if she caught up to him.

When Lynette discovers that the stranger is her ex-husband, looking “more definitely, heavily, his good-natured self,” and when his expression “crack[s] open into such spontaneous, friendly pleasure,” the threat of physical danger dissipates so much that a reader might even forget about the sense of menace in the opening scene. However, back at his home, when Toby insists on cleaning Lynette’s muddy coat (reminding her of the “delicate way he touched things” and of his “scrupulous solicitousness”), I found myself thinking about the incongruity between this man as we’ve now come to know him and the rough, inconsiderate stranger back at the subway station.

And soon after, we enter Toby’s point of view. There we learn how badly his failed marriage to Lynette has caused him to suffer, to the point where he’s put his post-divorce world together “all so Lynette could visit it someday and see that he’d managed to have a good life without her.” This struck me as a devastating revelation – despite Toby’s outward prosperity and contentment, he is damaged by the tragedy of his failed marriage, just as Lynette is. Hadley doesn’t come out and say this, but I’d bet Toby often barrels through the subway, propelled by his suffering into a kind of callous indifference that is at odds with the delicate, scrupulous person he is, or rather, used to be. The reason for the incongruity is revealed and the dramatic impact of that opening scene comes back to hit the reader hard.

I’m inclined to see all this as bold and creative on Hadley’s part. But there could be an argument that it’s unoriginal. After all, haven’t we read plenty of stories where something mysterious and troubling happens in the beginning, only to fade away and then manifest itself in some fashion later? Maybe it’s just a variant of Chekhov’s gun-on-the-table? The problem with these kinds of analyses is that they operate at such a high level of abstraction. They are the kinds of points made by those who argue there are only seven kinds of plots (a stranger comes to town; boy meets girl and loses her; etc.). From 60,000 feet in the air, many stories may look alike. But it is in its particulars that a given story can stand out, and I found that to be the case with this one.

Like Trevor, I enjoyed the middle part, too. It was interesting and tied together the mysterious physical action in the beginning to the later revelation about Toby’s true state of suffering. In my comment above, I noted that foe me, a key moment occurred when Toby cleaned Lynette’s muddy coat (reminding her of the “delicate way he touched things” and of his “scrupulous solicitousness”). This moment, firmly in the story’s middle, is what prompted me to focus more on the seeming mismatch between Toby as the reader now experiences him and the earlier Toby we witnessed at the train station. I find it hard to imagine the story achieving its dramatic effect if we didn’t see Toby’s present action (cleaning the coat) and experience, with Lynette, the triggering of her memory about the Toby to whom she was married. Their interaction struck me as essential.

It seems to me that a close read of the entire story (beginning, middle, and end) will yield rewards for many readers.

Almost totally unrelated but the Diablo Cody scripted/Jason Reitman directed Young Adult from 2011 is one of those half-hit half-miss movies. It’s got a crappy premise (not quite as cliched and silly and straining credulity as the one that mars the Hadley story, but pretty crappy) that undermines a lot of its strengths but it’s a truly, genuinely subversive script featuring a complex and “unlikeable” lead (with an immersed performance by Charlize Theron). Her character and the script are really, really rare in a mainstream Hollywood movie.
Here’s a quick link to a really good Slant piece about the screenwriting on that film and how it manages to avoid cliche and “pet the dog” Hollywood norms:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/understanding-screenwriting-88-young-adult-a-dangerous-method-the-palm-beach-story-more

I should acknowledge up front that I’m a much more middlebrow guy than most of the rest of the gang here. I had never heard of Hadley before, have read very little Munro, and to me Dido’s lament is “there’ll be no white flag above my door.” That said, I was thoroughly charmed by this story. To me, it read like a million answers to the single man’s age-old cry, Why Don’t Women Like Nice Guys? Toby is the stereotypical Nice Guy, and the laundry list of things she found irritating about him seemed to me to be amusing and insightful and quite elegantly written (“She felt a spasm of exasperation that Toby had stored up all the nonsense she’d ever spoken and taken it so seriously.”) I suppose that there are stories by Munro and others which already cover similar territory equally well, but not having read any of them I found the story enjoyable and interesting.

I also disagree with the conclusion that Toby is a sad figure; to me, this seems like something he regards as a poignant interlude in the generally solid, satisfying life he has made for himself, nothing more. Perhaps if he were to dwell on what might have been it could haunt him, but he doesn’t think that way, much; he is neither blessed nor cursed with his ex-wife’s restless imagination. The way that the emotional “balance of power” between them had shifted over the years also rang true, with Toby wiping Lynette’s number off the board not out of anger or sadness but practicality; there are a lot of things in his life that are more important to him than maintaining contact with Lynette, so he simply doesn’t. It’s just the kind of level-headed, risk-averse thinking that probably drove her away in the first place.

Parker, if your read is right Toby is not just sad, he’s pathological. I took the claim that “he’d put everything together—family and work and home—all so that Lynette could visit it someday and see that he’d managed to have a good life without her” as a claim about his initial motivations to live the life he has now. At the point of the break up it’s the “I’ll show you!” impulse. This impulse set him on the road to having the life he has now. But if he maintains this life now motivated by that “I’ll show you!” impulse then he is just insane, not merely sad. His resistance to thinking about his former “I’ll show you!” motivation is because, I believe, having built the life he has now he does truly value it for what it is – he really does love his wife and children – and he does not want to taint that love with a reminder that his initial impulse had been some combination of pride and revenge. Tony seems to have a good life and to be happy. So I don’t see him as a sad person, just someone who had some old woulds briefly opened again by meeting Lynette.

Eric, Parker, and David, these are interesting comments. I’m not sure anyone is suggesting that everything Toby has accomplished during the nine years since the divorce has been motivated by a desire to impress Lynette. And it makes sense to suppose that his motive to “show” Lynette was presumably much stronger in the aftermath of their breakup than in the present moment. At the same time, I think Parker has a point in observing that “much” of what he’s done is still “largely” motivated by that purpose, perhaps not entirely at a conscious level. Now that he’s achieved his purpose, he’s reminded of how much it meant to him – and he is repelled by that reminder.

I don’t think the story would have much dramatic impact if all that happens is the brief reopening of old wounds. Look at how shaken up Toby is after Lynette’s visit is over. He is so stunned and numb that he has to force himself to go through the paces of his normal routine, which ends up including eating an omelette without being able to taste it. He marvels that “Lynette had been here, in this house, printing her presence everywhere so that it haunted him wherever he looked.” He can’t bring himself to answer the phone when his wife calls. And of course, he confronts the terrible reality about how he’d put everything together “all so that Lynette could visit it someday and see that he’d managed to have a good life without her.”

We readers now see how badly damaged he is, to this day, by the failure of his marriage to Lynette, and this comes as a surprise since we, like Lynette, have been exposed to his lovely family, home, and his seemingly overall “prosperous” condition, which has largely been concealed from us by the outward appearances he maintains. Though he doesn’t always maintain those appearances – not, at least, when he’s in a position of relative anonymity, such as back at the train station.

Here’s a woman’s perspective! I’m a little behind with my New Yorker reading these dog days…

Trevor, I agree with you—I always look forward to Hadley’s work and this did not disappoint. From the beginning I was hooked on this character, Lynette, whose “idea of her own separateness from others was essential to [her] dignity.” This is as much a story of an artist, however minor, who, like all artists, claims a bit more sentience than average folk, and lives either slightly outside of life to better see it, or enacts a life worthy of art, and her relentless loneliness in that insistent “separateness,” as much as it is a story about the chance meeting between a long-divorced couple. Hadley expertly stages that metaphorical injury of having what has been tucked neatly into your memory and imagination nearly knock you down when you encounter it in the flesh.

I relished the opportunity to watch through the uncovered, nightfallen windows these characters reconnect in painful ways. Yes, I wish more New Yorker stories held insights like this one: “How strange that Toby was so simple and yet his simplicity had had all these solid, complicated effects in the real world… Whereas her own complexity seemed to have had no consequences. It was all wrapped up inside her—she had nothing to show for it.” Toby offers her protection from danger—the colliding car that sent them spinning across three lanes, recounted in the middle. But Lynette doesn’t want that, preferring to slip and slide and fall through the rest of life. She’s still wrapped in her “necessary” freedom in the end—the pain at the story’s start worse now, but accepted as inevitable.

That story arc is rich enough for me, with the added satisfaction of sharing Toby’s sightline, discovering how his statement at the end of their marriage, “Everything you’ve touched is spoiled for me now,” reenters the story in his description of Lynette “printing her presence everywhere so that it haunted him wherever he looked.”

And I, too, found that the delivery lived up satisfactorily to Dido’s lament.

I had no problem with the plot points of the telephone number or Facebook access. No claim is ever made that Toby had access to Facebook.

Just a point of clarification: in Hadley’s interview, she says it’s “easy to imagine what drew him to her,” which I interpret as different from—and just as true as—Treisman’s statement that it’s “difficult to imagine a time when they ‘belonged to each other,’ the latter being Lynette’s perspective.

One way that Munro outshines Hadley—and, well, every other writer I can think of—is that she allows for much more unspoken mystery; Hadley tends to over-explain. But I always learn something from her exposition so I don’t want it to disappear. I thought that such a tendency would make her a greater novelist—and maybe it does—but I didn’t enjoy The Past as much as I have her short stories. I haven’t quite put my finger on why, except perhaps that the messiness of a novel is bound to dilute the acuity found in a story like this.

In any case, the next time I see Hadley’s name in TNY’s contents, hers will be the first piece I read.

Thanks, David. I should have been clearer. By “access,” I mean that there is no mention in the story of Toby’s being a Facebook user. I happen to have a Facebook account, but my husband does not, and there’s no way that he would use my Facebook account to contact someone—it would never even occur to him. In order to send someone a message on Facebook, you must at least have “access”—an account.

Regardless, in this world of hyper-connectivity, anyone can track down anyone, so there is always a choice now, isn’t there? For purposes of this story, I like the way Hadley characterizes Lynette as someone who perhaps trolls a bit on Facebook, looking at Toby’s wife until the children make it too… painful? I also appreciate the way Toby holds the world at a distance—by not, as far as the story tells us, subscribing to that world of Facebook to see what his ex is up to; by finishing his omelette before he even picks up the forgotten bag, holding it “stiffly away from his body,” not even looking within; and by not answering his wife’s phone call. That all fits together beautifully as first-rate characterization. (Just as Lynette’s bold writing of her number on the family’s chalkboard speaks to her character.) In Toby’s world, the erased number means that it would now require a greater effort to find Lynette, which he will not endeavor to do. As the story ends, Lynette fully expects him to call her about the shopping bag; and Toby knows that she must expect him to. But he will not—which will send an ambiguous message. Perhaps he doesn’t want to see her again, or is saving her number for another day, or would rather hold on to some material possession of hers than have nothing at all. The narratives that they have been telling themselves for years about their failed relationship will continue, which I think is very much intentional on Hadley’s part.

So yes, ultimately, the fact is that Toby, as you say, “symbolically keep[s] a piece of her”–when at the end of their marriage he didn’t want any (physical) part of her left behind. To interpret that as a choice on some level makes the story even richer.

Greg, the idea of the “willing suspension of disbelief” was originally proposed by Coleridge talking about supernatural elements of stories. Our rational selves know magic isn’t real, but for the sake of a story we pretend that it is. The phrase has also been applied to the theatre, which often cannot faithfully recreate the kinds of events that are supposed to be happening. In the opening speech of Henry V Shakespeare’s chorus says,

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth,
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,

No stage can hold “the vasty fields of France” or show thousands of soldiers in battle, so Shakespeare acknowledges that and asks the audience to indulge him with their imaginations. But the phrase also gets (mis)used by people who want to deflect legitimate criticism from a work of fiction. If, in the context of a murder mystery a character is exonerated because he is too short to have been able to hide the gun on the top shelf and it never occurs to anyone he could have stood on a chair or if the solution to a mystery literally requires that one person be in two places at the same time, that’s very bad writing that cannot be saved by asking the audience to suspend their disbelief.

In the case of this story, I really do think Hadley went to some effort to try to construct a situation whereby Toby was stuck with keeping the bag without choosing to keep it. It does seem to me that she wanted this to be the final image we are left with as a significant metaphor for his emotional state – he cannot forget her and so keeps his feelings for her hidden inside, unable to be rid of them. But that ending is badly flawed if the construction does not work and asking me to suspend disbelief is a cover-up for poor workmanship, not for magic or the limitations of a stage.

Margaret, I am not convinced that the ending is made richer by the idea that he really did chose to keep the bag rather than being stuck with it involuntarily. I also don’t believe that this is the way Hadley wanted us to read the story either. She never says anything that indicates he had more than the two choices of throw it out or keep it. Had she not made such a point of describing how Lynette stalked Toby’s wife on Facebook then there would have been no reason to doubt his being stuck with the bag rather than choosing to keep it, but once it is introduced (and not even just in passing – being able to reach each other by Facebook is made to be an important part of how we understand Lynette’s feelings about Toby’s new family) asking us to forget it exists for the finale to work is asking too much.

Trevor,

“I think there are other aspects of the story you don’t like though, right David?”

I just went back and re-read my original comment on this story at the top of the page and I think it still sums up well both what I liked and didn’t like about the story: Interesting characters, especially Lynette, that I like a lot, but a weak plot. I mentioned there that the meeting of the two seemed a bad idea because it seemed to me to set up expectations that something would happen to justify the meeting. All the descriptions of their internal feelings could well have happened without the meeting, thus the original recommendation to cut the meeting. Then I spent some time talking about the bag because leaving it seemed to me to be the only justification in the end for having her come to his home. So if that bit of plot is flawed, then really the whole meeting up is problematic, so the story might have been better had they not actually met and talked.

Everything up to the point when they meet and the internal reflections we get from both that result from seeing each other after such a long time are all good and I enjoyed those parts a lot. It just seemed that their conversation was inconsequential (as I think you agreed above … let me check … “I also do not remember what they talked about specifically” … yes?) and the payoff was the bag leaving which does not create the dilemma Hadley wanted. So overall I would call it a good, but not great story.

” Indeed, it isn’t about any solution to disposing of the bag at all. It’s about the presence of the bag, in that moment, and in the coming weeks, months, years, as Toby both moves on and fails to move on.”

But the only reason the bag will be there in the coming weeks, months, and years is because he does not have a way to dispose of it (or so Hadley wants that to be the case). If he actually did have a simple way to return of the bag, and he does, then the significance of it still being present is completely different. It becomes a choice to be saddled with a piece of her rather than something he cannot escape. For the symbolism to work it cannot be something he chooses, so there being a way to easily return the bag does matter.

Ok, I have to ask this. A while back when I and Archer mentioned that the plot is unoriginal, Trevor asked what stories “Dido’s Lament” brought to mind. I offered a couple of examples. But to my suggestion that having the couple not meet and talk Trevor commented that it was “more unoriginal” and now Diana says it would have been “far more cliched”. So I have to ask: What other stories are you two thinking of when you think of a story of two people who used to be a couple and have broken up see each other after a gap of years, but neither acknowledges that they have seen the other and each reflect on the relationship on their own. Over the last few weeks I have tried to think of one, but not come up with any with that structure.

“…before sending their character off to have sex with some stranger after smoking some weed. ”

You just made coffee go up my nose. I need a kleenex here!!!

I’m coming late to this discussion – 43 thoughts. Quite a provocative piece. I’m going to ignore many comments and approach this in my own way. However, I will address some of the previous observations.

To understand this story better, I compiled a list of phrases that the author used to describe Lynette, who is the main character and the focus of the story:
“fuming inwardly and shuffling in half steps” as she goes to the train
She thought of herself as “original”, she felt she had been stupid for going into John Lewis,
She “believed that she despised the kind of clothes you could buy in department stores like John Lewis”
“stupid like everyone else” because she had a carrier bag
“She held herself apart from the mainstream” –an “essential” part of her “dignity”
In Toby’s house, “She was too full of her own performance”
“She had everything she wanted.” (She told Toby.)
“which was another lie”
“afraid that his loving kindness might enclose her too entirely” (when they were together)
“making her resentful”
“Displeased” – at being compared to Jaz
“anguish” over singing “It made her sick”
“she had failed”
“Everything was desolation”

What a crescendo of negativity! I would say that Lynette is a miserable person, who bases her self-image on externals and on being trendy. She despises the lonely crowd and has cut herself off from it. Also, she feared commitment when she was with Toby, and she used her singing and her need to pursue it as an excuse to break up with him. Now she is “free” to pursue her career, but she has failed at it. (More on “freedom” below.) Still, she tells Toby she has everything she wants.

So she is unhappy and self-deceived. And she deceives Toby during their conversation.

In addition to not understanding herself, she doesn’t know or understand Toby, despite thinking that she does. She thinks:

“Toby had opted for an easier chummier life, turning his back on certain kinds of difficulty.”

But that’s crap, she can’t know that, it’s just her excuse for Toby’s apparent happiness with the “sparky” Jaz.

She also calls Toby simple and herself complicated. That strikes me as more rationalization. Certainly in Toby’s section he is revealed as a more complicated person than she gives him credit for being.

And she assumes that Toby will be “surprised by how cheap it was” when he finds her blouse. More of her own fascination with image. In reality, as we see, he thinks no such thing.

What’s the point of the short section with Toby? One, it shows us that Lynette has entirely missed out how he feels about her. Two, it shows that they were both lying. Three, it attempts to create a sense of ironic tragedy. Personally, I thought this last feature was trite and unsuccessful.

Which is related to the Dido reference. As Trevor noted, this is about Purcell’s opera, and the aria that Dido sings as she expires from suicide:

Thy hand, Belinda, darkness shades me.
On thy bosom let me rest.
More I would, but death invades me.
Death is now a welcome guest.

When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create
No trouble in thy breast.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

A typical passionate female opera character, like La Boheme. Now, I hate opera as much as the next person. But at least this is a full-throated cry of despair. She is carrying out what she believes to be her fate. How anemic Lynette’s resolution to “action” sounds compared with this lament:

“She might not tell him anything, might not even get back to him. She might just take an Uber home.”

Yeah, take that, Toby. Incredibly wimpy relative to Dido. It’s especially ridiculous when we know that Toby has erased her phone number.

And what is Lynette’s fate? To go back to working as a temp and singing in student opera productions. Don’t worry, Lynette, we can forget your fate. Hadley is really stretching by invoking the Dido reference. Lynette is NOT a dramatic heroine.

So what was Hadley’s point in creating this character and telling this episode? To contrast the old ways of the heroes and heroines with their pale shadows of today? I don’t think this would be a justification for a story. But anyway I don’t think this is what she’s doing. In fact, I have no idea what she’s doing. And after reading the 43 thoughts, I still have no clue what she’s doing.

Contrast neurotic, emotionally repressed Lynette with the Mom in “Mother’s Day”. Here is the passage near the end where she has died and is in a kind of holding pen or waiting room and she tries to save her children from the hyenas but her hands are too hot because she doesn’t understand why she has failed so miserably in her life:

“Whose?” the girl baby said. “Whose fault?”

“I don’t know,” she cried desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really don’t! Mine? My fault?”

“No,” the girl baby said.

“What the hell? Fine, forget the babies, she’d keep the hot hands. She was what she was. No one could blame her. As long as she was Alma, she’d be mad. She had a right. Did she want to be mad? No. What she wanted to be was her, younger. Her, non-mad. Her, not yet mad. Pre-Paul. Smelling lilacs, swinging that diploma. No, even before that: so young she wanted nothing yet, liked nothing, disliked nothing. No, before that: before she was even Alma, because Alma would always find Paul, love Paul, and Paul would always be Paul.

“It came to her, and then was happening: it would be fixed when she stopped being Alma.

“Her arms and hands went cool and pale, perfectly normal.”

Here is a character who cares about something, who is not trying to be fatally cool, who is desperate to find a solution. And she does – she makes a deep realization. What a contrast with Lynette, who understands no more about herself at the end of the story than at the beginning.

For some reason, when I read “Dido’s Lament” I thought of “A Bit on the Side”. So I went back and re-read it. Two lovers, who start out lying to each other – “lies of silence”, the woman says — like Toby and Lynette. But then – they become honest. In seriously restrained language (“the delicacy of their reticence”), Trevor relates their attempts to make their parting as good as the time they had together. He uses just flashes of emotion:

“I mind. You’re everything to me. You’re the world.”

How much more powerful this quiet parting is, how much more evocative of the sadness of an affair ending, a valuable companion lost, than all of Lynette’s and Hadley’s heavyhanded maundering. I felt sad – actually choked-up — by Trevor’s people’s plight. I felt nothing for Lynette at the end of Hadley’s story. I think this is because Trevor’s people care, and allow themselves to be open to their feelings – including loss and sadness – if only in a subdued way. Whereas Lynette is too self-absorbed and insecure to allow herself to feel anything strong either way.

In truth, I’m not even sure what Hadley wants us to feel – Sadness? Admiration? Tragic irony? Who knows? As Archer said, “you’re not sure whether to admire or pity by the end.”

BTW, with regard to whether Hadley’s plot is original or not, Trevor’s tale is a forerunner. And much better done.

With regard to Toby’s section, and whether he has spent his life trying to prove himself to (his mental image of) Lynette, I agree with Parker: “This is hard to imagine”. I agree with Trevor‘s subtle and beautifully worded interpretation: “He has old wounds and when he is brought to view them it isn’t that they’ve re-opened: it’s startling to see they have never healed in the first place.”

I agree with these two comments:

(about Hadley’s stories): “I have come to expect that I am not going to be too terribly disappointed, but at the same time I’m not going to get something I will find all that special. (David)

“Munro’s gift was to take the quotidian and make it transcendent. It’s a sublime and singular talent. Hadley never reaches those heights.” (sorry, don’t remember who wrote that)

One more comparison/contrast – Checkhov’s “Big Volodya and Little Volodya”. How is this related to Hadley’s story? Checkhov writes of the plight of a woman, Sophia Lovovna, in 19th century Russia who is circumscribed and bound by social restrictions. She is married to an older man, whose wealth provides her with copious creature comforts, including servants. However, she is frustrated and dissatisfied and is having an affair with a younger man, who treats her with contempt. Through incidents with the woman’s female relatives – a nun, a spinster — incidents that are interesting in themselves, Chekhov shows us that the alternatives for a woman in that society are bleak. Compared with the character in the Chekhov story, Lynette’s complaints about freedom and career and relationships are revealed as the whining of a woman who can’t face reality, which could be pretty good for her. Instead she continues to live in a self-deluded state. FWP.

Later even than William! I liked the story, and I thought entitling it Dido’s Lament enlarged its echo and made the piece especially poignant. It is not only Purcell’s lyric that makes the aria one of the saddest in the repertory, but the music, the music (remember Lynette is a singer). The unhappiest and most resonant line for me was not Lynette’s but Toby’s, the realization that he has created a scenario for Lynette and now she’s seen it. What emptiness. I appreciate all the other comments and especially the exegeses that lead us to other writers, but I think that trying to tell Tessa Hadley how a story should have been written is an exercise in egotistical futility and makes me laugh. Hate opera? Work on that.

WOW William – Your dissection of the story and of our comments was a real treat to read!

My favourite part was your contrasting to William Trevor’s “A Bit on the Side” and to Alice Munro’s “Mother’s Day”…..you may laugh, but I believe that one day Hadley will come close to reaching their high level.

Thanks Patricia for sharing your thoughts. I especially enjoyed your past personal observation of a couple not truly being attracted to each other.

You also stated, “I actually don’t think Hadley plays second fiddle to Munro at all.” Well, the way I see it is that Hadley is being complimented when mentioned in the same company as Munro. Hadley is a big fan of Munro, and I am certain she would agree that she isn’t at Munro’s level yet.

And I love the last quote you shared Patricia! It illustrates Hadley’s focus on the inner life in her fiction. She has emphasized over and over again that the material world is simply a shell.