A good coming-of-age story about a young woman's sexuality is hard to find, which is unfortunate, given that so much of the trope can be magical, can walk that fine line between grace and awkwardness, gentleness and aggression. Tessa Hadley's short story about Jane, a plain teenage girl living in sixties England, makes so much of this work though. Her sexual awakening comes from being picked up by three older boys and whisked away on an adventure, full of shoplifting, skinny dipping, sex and heartbreak across the space of a night. The story manages to be a strange combination: both whimsical and oddly harrowing. It's the art of getting noticed
It didn’t occur to Jane that the car would stop for her; she watched
it hungrily, sifting the silky dust between her toes. Daniel, the
driver, Jane saw at once, was the best-looking of the three; in fact, he
was crushingly beautiful—his features smudged and vivid at once, as if
sketched in black ink—and her heart fastened on him. When he had stopped
the car, he asked her what her name was and she told him. “Want to come
for a ride?” he said kindly.
You can read An Abduction for free care of The New Yorker.
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