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A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

An abduction that really isn't - in the New Yorker

Tessa Hadley's story in the current New Yorker, An Abduction, isn't really about one - even though it begins with the grippping sentence that states something like: I was a victim of an abduction and nobody noticed. Well, I guess it's meant to be slightly ironic or a double-entendre, but the events of the story are not quite as set forth: teenage girl, somewhat bored during the summer, largely ignored y parents and sibs, hanging around the driveway outside her house, gets picked up by 3 guys in a sports car; the guys are Oxford students (story in London area - Surrey, late 1960s or so) - the boys take her on a jaunt involving shoplifting, drinking, then, back at the house of one of the guys, some drug use and eventually, sex - she has sex, that is, with one of the 3 guys, the handsomest of group - it's her first time, and obviously he's taking serious advantage of a younger girl, but she's not as innocent as she puts forth and certainly old enough and mature enough to get out of the situation or to draw a line. They're careless, reckless, maybe somewhat cruel guys, but they're not at all criminals, and if she'd asked for a ride home - which she does, eventually - it seems like they'd comply. So that's part of the beauty of the story, I guess, that what was a fairly innocent fling or jaunt for the young guys was traumatic for the younger girl - though purports that she went on to have a pretty normal life of marriage, kids, divorce, something about that experience stays with her - in an ending that reminds me a bit of some of the Chekhov I've been reading, we jump forward in time, to the near present, at the end of the story, as the main character recalls, in scattered form, these incidents for her therapist, and the guy - they never cross paths after this fling or "abduction," if you will - has no memory of the events. Hadley has become a New Yorker fave, and I think this is one of her strongest stories - it's not as self-consciously English as some of her others, it really could be set in the U.S. or anywhere - though she does have a propensity for weird Britishisms like debouch and others too odd even to look up: secataire, anyone?

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