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A review by flanandsorbet
Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley
3.0
I feel like I know the kinds of people in this book well (I'm even married to an Eastern European named Alex) but that there is something not quite right. They are well drawn, but their likeness to plausible people is off just enough to cause irritation. I felt that Hadley's deep perceptiveness was deceived or deflected by her own characters. Alex, for example, has an empty core that cannot be explained by mere vanity or selfishness.
The section of the book where young Lydia poses as a babysitter in an attempt to steal Alex, the exotic, tortured poet from his wife could have been me at seventeen. Lydia made sense here in this scene, she did things that a certain type of headstrong, self-absorbed young woman would do. (Fortunately I had no success in such escapades, let it be known.) But elsewhere she is a beautiful, lazy blowup doll who inexplicably fascinates Christine because of her sardonic, unflinching worldview. If you say so, Tessa Hadley, but I'm not getting that from her.
And Alex, who is he? We see him led about by his libido in small interludes over the years, but the rest of him never comes into focus. When he performs a heroic act of thoughtfulness, driving to Glasgow to spare his dead friend's daughter the pain of hearing of his death by phone, I was unable to imagine such behavior. No one acts like this, certainly not artistic, moody cads.
Hadley never provides a satisfying explanation for why these four people have stayed emotionally intertwined for thirty years. All four want the other's spouse, and the male and female friends have a deep connection, supposedly. I understand that, or am willing to take it on faith. But the quartet seemed bound together past the time when such a group would naturally drift apart. Lusting after each other throughout their twenties, thirties, maybe even forties. That their children were also completely bound up in this web into a second generation seemed far-fetched. Some stronger glue would be needed than any Hadley shows us.
Zachary, Lydia's husband, does not annoy by being only lightly sketched in. The hints one receives of his psyche are enough. But Christine, a plausible stand-in for the author herself, is almost as maddeningly empty as Alex. What is she, except a woman who needs "a room of her own"? I wanted to feel her triumph when her artistic powers returned to her at the end of the book, but I didn't know her well enough to share her joy.
The section of the book where young Lydia poses as a babysitter in an attempt to steal Alex, the exotic, tortured poet from his wife could have been me at seventeen. Lydia made sense here in this scene, she did things that a certain type of headstrong, self-absorbed young woman would do. (Fortunately I had no success in such escapades, let it be known.) But elsewhere she is a beautiful, lazy blowup doll who inexplicably fascinates Christine because of her sardonic, unflinching worldview. If you say so, Tessa Hadley, but I'm not getting that from her.
And Alex, who is he? We see him led about by his libido in small interludes over the years, but the rest of him never comes into focus. When he performs a heroic act of thoughtfulness, driving to Glasgow to spare his dead friend's daughter the pain of hearing of his death by phone, I was unable to imagine such behavior. No one acts like this, certainly not artistic, moody cads.
Hadley never provides a satisfying explanation for why these four people have stayed emotionally intertwined for thirty years. All four want the other's spouse, and the male and female friends have a deep connection, supposedly. I understand that, or am willing to take it on faith. But the quartet seemed bound together past the time when such a group would naturally drift apart. Lusting after each other throughout their twenties, thirties, maybe even forties. That their children were also completely bound up in this web into a second generation seemed far-fetched. Some stronger glue would be needed than any Hadley shows us.
Zachary, Lydia's husband, does not annoy by being only lightly sketched in. The hints one receives of his psyche are enough. But Christine, a plausible stand-in for the author herself, is almost as maddeningly empty as Alex. What is she, except a woman who needs "a room of her own"? I wanted to feel her triumph when her artistic powers returned to her at the end of the book, but I didn't know her well enough to share her joy.