The Past by Tessa Hadley
'There is something reassuring yet deliciously unexpected about a Tessa Hadley novel.' - Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph Over five novels and two collections of stories Tessa Hadley has earned a reputation as a fiction writer of remarkable gifts, and been compared with Elizabeth Bowen and Alice Munro. In her new novel three sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents’ old house for three long, hot summer weeks. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past -- their mother took them there when she left their father – but now they may have to sell it. And under the idyllic surface, there are tensions. Roland has come with his new wife and his sisters don’t like her. Kasim, the twenty-year-old son of Alice’s ex-boyfriend, makes plans to seduce Molly, Roland’s teenage daughter. Fran’s children uncover an ugly secret in a ruined cottage in the woods. Passion erupts where it’s least expected, blasting the quiet self-possession of Harriet, the oldest sister. A way of life – bourgeois, literate, ritualised – winds down to its inevitable end. With uncanny precision and extraordinary sympathy, Tessa Hadley charts the squalls of lust and envy disrupting this ill-assorted house party, as well as the consolations of memory and affection, the beauty of the natural world, the shifting of history under the social surface. From the first page the reader is absorbed and enthralled, watching a superb craftsman at work.
One of the best novels of 2016-- Ron Charles * Washington Post *
I find Tessa Hadley’s work genuinely helpful, especially when it comes to the big subjects: love and marriage, the political versus the personal, children, friendship. And then there are the sentences themselves, so precise and beautiful, often sly, sometimes devastating, always expertly paced. Few writers give me such consistent pleasure. -- Zadie Smith
She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A new Tessa Hadley is a pleasure to be savoured… The Past is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire. -- Sameer Rahim, four stars * Daily Telegraph *
Hadley is an exquisite writer, with a fine eye for detail and a way of crafting sentences that make you stop and inhale * The Times *
I find Tessa Hadley’s work genuinely helpful, especially when it comes to the big subjects: love and marriage, the political versus the personal, children, friendship. And then there are the sentences themselves, so precise and beautiful, often sly, sometimes devastating, always expertly paced. Few writers give me such consistent pleasure. -- Zadie Smith
She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A new Tessa Hadley is a pleasure to be savoured… The Past is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire. -- Sameer Rahim, four stars * Daily Telegraph *
Hadley is an exquisite writer, with a fine eye for detail and a way of crafting sentences that make you stop and inhale * The Times *
Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl and The Past, and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams. The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She lives in London and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and other magazines.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224101691 |
| ISBN 10 | 0224101692 |
| Title | The Past |
| Author | Tessa Hadley |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2015-09-03 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |