Tessa Hadley in Barcelona, February 2014
ONE SATURDAY MORNING
After reading the story, the first thing that perplexes you is the title. The story takes place on a Saturday and it starts in the morning, but a very important part of it, both in terms of ideas and in terms of descriptions and events, happens in the evening. And the afternoon is nowhere to be seen, although it isn’t an ellipsis (the narrator hasn’t hidden something crucial for the story). Perhaps the title would be a kind of beginning, as for instance, “Once upon a time”, a way to start a story that then goes on on its own.
The story is set in Great Britain, or more specifically, in Wales, as the author is Welsh, in the 1960s. The year is important because the period is just before the first wave of feminism —the mother in the story is “modern”: she has something of an artist about her, she is married to a teacher, she and her husband take a risk buying an old house because they want to refurbish it to their own tastes, her daughter has tried ballet and is now learning to play the piano… But the mother is a housewife; the narrator doesn’t mention any intellectual ambitions of hers or any interest in women’s liberation politics nor hints at anything about the bondage of housewives. She is happy with what she does and isn’t conscious of being oppressed.
Her daughter Carrie, our protagonist, admires her for being so capable of attracting people around her and being the queen of the party, but also for her skills as a housewife; she believes she is a great household manager.
Carrie is ten years old and she finds herself in a critical moment in her life: she is no longer a child, nor is she an adult (she isn’t even a teenager). She feels there’s a long distance between herself and her mother, a full-grown person; she doesn’t even know how to behave around an adult friend of the family —she feels she can’t hold a suitable conversation with him as if she were a mature woman, but also knows she can’t offer to play with him, as if she were a child.
By contrast, her brother is a boy, and being a boy, he plays sports, catches bugs, keeps a weather journal, and definitely doesn’t pay any attention to the newcomer, Dom Smith, not even to any adult. He doesn’t have any crisis at all: he is a child.
Carrie is in the middle of a critical age, between childhood and the beginning of maturity, she is only a prepubescent girl. And now, at this moment, something heavier falls upon her: the newcomer comes with the news that his wife suddenly died some months ago. Death appears on Carrie’s horizon, and not only death, but feelings and social conventions. How deeply must she feel Dom’s loss? What kind of consolation should she offer him? She doesn’t even know this kind of grief, she knows almost nothing about the man, and his wife’s death wasn’t so recent. She is completely confounded by Dom’s grief and behaviour: he didn’t tell his friends about his loss, he suddenly appears at their house, and tells them the news, he seems happy to return to their house in the evening, where a party is taking place, he plays table tennis with Carrie’s father with so much energy, he tries to find consolation in Carrie’s mother, but also tenderness or perhaps love… Maybe adults don’t know either how to deal with grief.
Carrie, a girl who is aware of her own mistakes (for instance: she wasn’t good at ballet, she isn’t excellent at music, she isn’t even a very good friend, writing absurd letters about a fat boy in her class and then losing the horrible letter) now finds herself in the centre of a big confusion and the only beacon of light is her mother, someone who knows what to do at every moment.
After reading the story, the first thing that perplexes you is the title. The story takes place on a Saturday and it starts in the morning, but a very important part of it, both in terms of ideas and in terms of descriptions and events, happens in the evening. And the afternoon is nowhere to be seen, although it isn’t an ellipsis (the narrator hasn’t hidden something crucial for the story). Perhaps the title would be a kind of beginning, as for instance, “Once upon a time”, a way to start a story that then goes on on its own.
The story is set in Great Britain, or more specifically, in Wales, as the author is Welsh, in the 1960s. The year is important because the period is just before the first wave of feminism —the mother in the story is “modern”: she has something of an artist about her, she is married to a teacher, she and her husband take a risk buying an old house because they want to refurbish it to their own tastes, her daughter has tried ballet and is now learning to play the piano… But the mother is a housewife; the narrator doesn’t mention any intellectual ambitions of hers or any interest in women’s liberation politics nor hints at anything about the bondage of housewives. She is happy with what she does and isn’t conscious of being oppressed.
Her daughter Carrie, our protagonist, admires her for being so capable of attracting people around her and being the queen of the party, but also for her skills as a housewife; she believes she is a great household manager.
Carrie is ten years old and she finds herself in a critical moment in her life: she is no longer a child, nor is she an adult (she isn’t even a teenager). She feels there’s a long distance between herself and her mother, a full-grown person; she doesn’t even know how to behave around an adult friend of the family —she feels she can’t hold a suitable conversation with him as if she were a mature woman, but also knows she can’t offer to play with him, as if she were a child.
By contrast, her brother is a boy, and being a boy, he plays sports, catches bugs, keeps a weather journal, and definitely doesn’t pay any attention to the newcomer, Dom Smith, not even to any adult. He doesn’t have any crisis at all: he is a child.
Carrie is in the middle of a critical age, between childhood and the beginning of maturity, she is only a prepubescent girl. And now, at this moment, something heavier falls upon her: the newcomer comes with the news that his wife suddenly died some months ago. Death appears on Carrie’s horizon, and not only death, but feelings and social conventions. How deeply must she feel Dom’s loss? What kind of consolation should she offer him? She doesn’t even know this kind of grief, she knows almost nothing about the man, and his wife’s death wasn’t so recent. She is completely confounded by Dom’s grief and behaviour: he didn’t tell his friends about his loss, he suddenly appears at their house, and tells them the news, he seems happy to return to their house in the evening, where a party is taking place, he plays table tennis with Carrie’s father with so much energy, he tries to find consolation in Carrie’s mother, but also tenderness or perhaps love… Maybe adults don’t know either how to deal with grief.
Carrie, a girl who is aware of her own mistakes (for instance: she wasn’t good at ballet, she isn’t excellent at music, she isn’t even a very good friend, writing absurd letters about a fat boy in her class and then losing the horrible letter) now finds herself in the centre of a big confusion and the only beacon of light is her mother, someone who knows what to do at every moment.
QUESTIONS
-Do you think adolescence is more of a biological fact than a cultural one, or vice versa?
-What extracurricular activities do you think are the best ones for your children?
-Carrie doesn’t know exactly the meaning of death. In your opinion, at what age do we become aware of the reality of death?
VOCABULARY
terrace, braced, pelmet, arty, fit as a fiddle, slapdash, innuendo, raucous, waft, breaking it down, plangent, sticking out, reprieved, reefer jacket, tagged, basking, coax, gabbled, pulling up, carriers, foreboding, midges