The daughters of the Angry Young Men: Tessa Hadley's fiction

Over time, I've developed more of an appreciation for Tessa Hadley's stories, which now seem to appear quite regularly in The New Yorker. Some first they published struck me as pretty flat and bland - portraits in time of middle-aged women in middle-class England, and I felt the same stories translated into American characters and settings would not have drawn any attention. Just as Americans assume anyone with a British accent is intelligent, American readers (sometimes) any story that references council houses, "in hospital," or "reading history" in "university" for a "first" is classy. Oh, well - over time, either I've changed or Hadley has but to me her stories are now much more engaging and well crafted (they were always well written). Current New Yorker story, Under the Sign of the Moon, is about a fairly typical Hadley protagonist, a 60-year-old London of no particular great distinction or achievement, struggling with health issues and adult-daughter issues, riding train to Liverpool to visit her daughter, is "chatted up" by a man who's just a little too friendly - or too lonely. Is the guy a creep, or just a needy, nerdish oddball? Hadley keeps us thinking and guessing right up to the last line - very artfully done. Hadley is now unofficially the New Yorker go-to writer for news of contemporary Britain. That means, I guess, that William Trevor has more or less retired from writing? It's been a long time since we've seen any of his work in the New Yorker, and his last story there was very strained. He'll never be replaced - he is clearly one of the great writers of our time - but Hadley is bringing a perspective on British life that we haven't seen much of before - the lives of the daughters (and granddaughters) of the Angry Young Men of the '50s.