{"id":12273,"date":"2010-11-08T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=12273"},"modified":"2016-06-23T17:43:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T21:43:06","slug":"tessa-hadley-the-trojan-prince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/11\/08\/tessa-hadley-the-trojan-prince\/","title":{"rendered":"Tessa Hadley: “The Trojan Prince”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The Trojan Prince\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Tessa Hadley<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the November 15, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span><\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
I’m finally catching up with my reading of these stories, and I’m glad to say that “The Trojan Prince” made it a pleasure.\u00a0I’ve been intrigued with Tessa Hadley’s stories in The New Yorker<\/em>, but where I always felt only s0-so with her previous ones, I quite liked this one about\u00a0James McIlvanney\u00a0(sixteen), his cousin Ellen Pearson (who might be “a useful friend to have”), and her friend Connie Chappell (twenty). It takes place in the 1920s in the UK.<\/p>\n
When the story begins, James is standing before the daunting door of Ellen’s house.\u00a0He himself is only following some unconscious intuition in visiting his wealthier cousin (or second cousin, or thereabouts).<\/p>\n
He hasn’t said a word to his mother about coming here.<\/span><\/p>\n
All he has in mind is that Ellen would be a useful friend to have.\u00a0He hasn’t followed this through to any idea of paying court to her, or advancing himself in the world that way; he doesn’t like to think about courtship or marrying at all — and he really may be going away to sea at some point soon.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When James is introduced into the home, he is shocked and a bit upset that Connie has been living there.\u00a0He knows things would work out better without her around.<\/p>\n
James has recently set up a potential apprenticeship aboard a cargo ship.\u00a0 As an excuse for visiting, he says he came to say goodbye. And this is how the story begins.\u00a0In these last days of his youth, James spends a lot of time with Connie and Ellen.<\/p>\n
It’s the same each time: although the visits to the Pearson house are his own idea, he feels the girls are drawing him there, as though he were under their spell.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He goes about with one on each arm, imagining “that the girls are water swirling around him.”\u00a0It’s a very nice portrait of a rather carefree time.\u00a0 World War I has ended, and anything seems possible. Hadley is very skilled at placing subtle sexual tension (anything sexual repulses James — at least, that’s what he thinks in his innocence), and this little\u00a0triangle is well set up to explore a wide variety of themes while staying focused on an interesting story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker story is Tessa Hadley’s “The Trojan Prince.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Tessa Hadley: \"The Trojan Prince\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,234],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-12273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-tessa-hadley","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/The-Trojan-Prince.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3bX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12273"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18853,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12273\/revisions\/18853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12273"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}