Yesterday was a little too nice outside (and I guess I was a little too lazy) to sit in front of a computer and compose a post. But I did read a short story and a few other books as well, so my posting schedule will be a little off this week, but I'll catch up eventually. Many thanks for the 'coming of age, beachy-setting' reading suggestions that have been offered. I have two books on hand already and I know I can find the others at the library so I will be exploring them this week (and will let you know what I come up with in time for next weekend) and seeing which other books I can come up with--perhaps a list to follow. How fitting since I want a coming-of-age story that the Elizabeth Taylor short story I read was about three young women going to their first proper dance.
Elizabeth Taylor is so talented at capturing those domestic scenes that ring entirely true. She moves from character to character to tell her story, inside the minds of the Pollard family--Myra the mother who likes to be around the young people as "they keep one young oneself". Charles is the eldest sibling who finds it impossible to find a quiet place to practice his calling for three cheers that he must undertake later at the dance, as his youngest twin sisters take great pleasure in following him about and teasing him mercilessly.
It's sixteen-year-old Katie, however, the middle child whose best friends from school are soon arriving, whose moment as a blossoming young woman is the focus of the story. The three share a bedroom where they go to school and Katie dreads how her family will appear to them. Obnoxious younger sisters who are such nuisances and a bore of an elder brother. (Though maybe not such a bore since one of the girls asks after him the moment they descend from the train. Seeing ones family through the eyes of others is always most illuminating.
"It was now that she began to see her home through their eyes--the purple brick house looked heavy and ugly now that the sun had gone behind a cloud; the south wall was covered by a magnolia tree; there were one or two big, cream flowers among the dark leaves: doves were walking about on the slate roof; some of the windows reflected the blue sky and moving clouds. To Katie, it was like being shown a photograph which she did not immediately recognize--unevocative, as were the photographs of their mothers in the dormitory at school--they seldom glanced at them from the beginning of term to the end."
There is nothing especially shocking about this story. No earth shattering twist, just the essence of life, a slice of a slightly more than average day in a middle class family. Each member contributing a little more color to the story, moving it along just a little bit, shedding a little light on some other family member, friend upon friend.
It's this one somewhat more special moment than all the rest that Taylor paint so vividly yet so simply.
"But they were coming downstairs. They had left the room with its beds covered with clothes, its floor strewn with tissue-paper. They descended; the rose, the mauve, the white. Like a bunch of sweet-peas they looked, George [the father] thought."
She gets all the details down just right, to the girl who ends up being a wallflower (you can tell by looking at her that she'll be left on the shelf), the one who is experiencing having her first beau and the one who catches her friend's brother's eye. Down to that last blissful moment of knowing, being a little more aware of life and the world as she lays awake in bed after all is said and done.
Even the seemingly mundane is exciting in Elizabeth Taylor's hands.
Next week "Summer Schools".