Stages of Life

Late in Tessa Hadley's Clever Girl, main character Stella muses that “the highest test was not in what you chose, but in how you lived out what befell you”. She is certainly talking about herself. Each of the book's ten chapters describes what 'befell' Stella in a period of her life, from her childhood with a single mother in postwar Bristol England in the early 1960's, to her own single motherhood and commune life in the 70's, to her married middle age. (If you are a New Yorker reader you may recognize some of the early chapters, which appeared there as short stories). Although Stella can be clever, she is often the victim rather than the driver of her fate. She somehow manages to be impulsive and passive at the same time, and the result is a life that lurches forward with plenty of wrong turns.

I am often annoyed with passive characters (I had that problem with “The Flamethrowers”), but Stella is so clear-eyed and honest about her mistakes that I grew to admire her. Hadley's prose has a lot to do with that. It is crisp and concise, not at all showy, but sharply observant, and by the end incidents that seemed isolated and unconnected form a cohesive portrait.

Stella is not always clever, but she does have the good sense to read great literature to keep her sanity when her life is chaotic. You've got to like a girl for that.