Thursday, November 25, 2010

The Trojan Prince: A Short Story Review

Tessa Hadley's pictureTessa Hadley lives in Cardiff, Wales, and teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University.  Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. 

She wrote a fiction short story featured in the New Yorker Nov 15, 2010 edition, called The Trojan Prince.
 
The story is about a 16 year old boy named James McIlvanney in a 1920 setting; just missing the First World War. He is infatuated with a girl named Ellen Pearson, who is really his second cousin. But marriage wasn't on his to do list, and thought he may be going away to sea shortly anyway. His floundering over Ellen is interrupted throughout by Connie Chappell, one of Ellen's close friends. The plot goes forward at a fairly slow pace, little suspense, but used very descriptive scenes to help the reader along with James pondering over Ellen and whether or not he'd be happy in marriage with her, or if he should follow his urge to go out to sea.
 
This piece was well written, using great examples of dialogue, point of view, and characterization. However the story seemed bogged down with a slow pace, and only the descriptive writing style kept me intrigued. By the end of the story I did find myself somewhat attached to the characters, the main character James in particular, but was squandered by an ending I questioned of being believable.
 
But overall I enjoyed reading this story and look forward to reading another from Tessa Hadley in the near future.

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