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9 Vintage Paperback Novels to Add to Your Summer TBR Pile

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Where to start reading Tessa Hadley

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20 books everyone should read in their forties

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Features

Tessa Hadley: ‘I am so glad I didn’t publish a debut novel at 25’

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‘I still hold my breath reading it’: Penguin authors share their favourite love stories

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Podcasts

The Vintage Podcast, August: Who Am I?

The exhilarating new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Late in the Day

Free Love

As London comes alive with the 1960s youth revolution, one woman makes a choice that defies all expectations. 
 
'So real and humane and utterly transporting' Meg Mason 
 
It's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable. 
 
But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations . . . 
 
'Wonderful' Marian Keyes 
 
'My favourite author' Kate Atkinson 
 
'Achingly moving and real' Guardian 
 
'Beguiling' Hilary Mantel 
 
'Compelling' Elizabeth Day 
 
'Will bring you to tears' Daily Mail

So real and humane and utterly transporting; fresh and yet, with the feeling of a beloved classic.

I utterly LOVED this book!!!!! Tessa Hadley might be my new favourite writer... she is wonderful.

A beguiling novel, deceptively easy to read; beneath the surface swim disturbing and age-old questions about freedom and fate.

Tessa Hadley is my favourite author.

Beautifully structured and brilliantly paced. It displays Tessa Hadley's extraordinary skill at making both surface life and deep interiors come fully alive.

I was utterly transported. Tessa Hadley is a true writer and this is such an enthralling novel, just so properly attentive to life.

Tessa Hadley knows everything there is to know about the intricate, complex, contradictory workings of the human mind and heart. Her power to embed that understanding in unfailingly intelligent prose is unmatched in contemporary fiction.

Artful, profound and subtle . . . what a great writer she is.

In keen, lush prose, Hadley conveys the many ways her characters delude themselves amid fraught relationships between parents and children as well as between lovers. The result is sumptuous and surprising.

A sumptuous stylist, Hadley is a writer for whom language trumps all else. Any publication of hers, whether of short or long fiction, is cause for celebration for the pure pleasure of the prose.

Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

Pacy and packed with well-drawn characters.

Sunday Telegraph, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

Hadley is our great novelist of bourgeois domesticity, sensitive to its emotional perturbations and...devotedly attentive to its gorgeous solidity.

Hadley... has the gift for bringing everything she has, sees and knows to the characters she creates... Free Love is brilliantly plotted and keeps its secret through two-thirds of its length so faithfully, I did not even begin to guess at the hugely satisfying slipknot ahead.

No one is better than Tessa Hadley at capturing the secret longing that presides within her many wonderful characters. Her latest, written in her usual crisp, absorbing prose, charts the sexual awakening of one woman in 1960s London.

Evening Standard, *Books to Look Out For 2022*

Achingly moving and real... Hadley's poignant drawing together of a situation...shows a writer with boundless compassion. Yet again, she offers insightful and sensitive understanding of the quiet compromises people make to survive in a deeply compromised world.

A fascinating portrait of a world of politics, manners, morals and the decline of empire in a period of rapid societal change... Hadley writes compellingly fascinating characters viewed from every angle, perfectly encapsulating an era of change.

A gorgeously magnanimous novel, which reprises Hadley's favoured themes of middle age, and how - and when, and if - to change one's life.

Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive exploration of love, sexual freedom and living out the most meaningful version of our lives.

An engrossing ploy, elegant nuanced writing...this is a novel to savour

As ever, Ms Hadley's prose is limpid and measured yet richly sonorous: her story combines a modern sensibility with the psychological realism of writers such as Henry James... The ending glimmers with possibility--while suggesting that liberation comes at a cost.

With astute psychological awareness of her characters, Hadley presents a visceral and engaging picture of a bygone time. Unexpected twists and unclichéd characters support the luscious language, making this a real pleasure of a read.

Free Love artfully delves beneath the veneer of the British middle class to tell an intimate story of generational discord, political change and sexual freedom.

Hadley's resplendent eighth novel... [has] poignantly astute observations on class, destiny and the false promises of the sexual revolution.

Hadley's eighth novel is as absorbing as any of her other fiction, with complex family secrets, brilliant insights...and lush descriptions of nature.

Hadley chooses her words with spellbinding precision.

Hadley's complex sentences are purring marvels of engineering... A brilliant writer of interiority...she has a gift...for portraying the state of wanting to be wanted, or simply to be seen... almost every page struck me anew with some elegant phrasing, feline irony or shrewdly sympathetic insight.

Few contemporary novelists write about their characters' inner worlds with a finely filigreed but plain-spoken acuity that Tessa Hadley brings to her work...accessing roving, rich depths... Hadley is a master in her field.

"With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she's one of the greatest stylists alive. . . . To read Hadley's fiction is to grow self-conscious in the best way: to recognize with astonishment the emotions playing behind our own expressions, to hear articulated our own inchoate anxieties. . . . The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent-lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley's attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire. . . . Extraordinary.

Brilliant.... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day would feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important.... It's to her credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once.... We've seen this before, and we've never seen this before, and it's spectacular.

Utterly engrossing... Free Love is highly gratifying.

Brilliantly done... Hadley writes with devastating psychological insight, her prose spare and scalpel sharp. But she is also judiciously non-judgemental, a generous chronicler of the foibles and fears that mar and make a marriage.

Free Love is an absolute joy to read from a writer who never puts a word wrong. Fans of Small Pleasures will love it.

[A] brilliant, sensual, seductively plotted new novel... Hadley has written an extraordinary story about love and transformation.

Free Love is often deeply perceptive and affecting... it lets you imagine what it was like to wrestle with old and new ways of thinking in an age that shaped (and continues to shape) our own.

It's the 1960s and socialism, sex and nuclear anxiety have come crashing into the middle-class bubble Tessa Hadley novels usually operate so brilliant within.

A story about change and its limits, its beautifully judged ending will bring you to tears.

[An] acutely realised, deeply humane novel... Unmissable.

No novel published this year gave me more pleasure than Tessa Hadley's Free Love.

Nothing drew me in as conclusively as Free Love by Tessa Hadley, who is surely one of our most astute and deft observers of everyday lives.

Hadley's novels continue to get better and better - and this is her finest, most pleasurable yet... it's near enough the perfect present in book form

She is, in all her mastery of the craft, a writer's writer.

As London comes alive with the new youth revolution, one woman makes a choice that defies all expectations. 
 
'Transporting' Meg Mason 
 
'Wonderful' Marian Keyes 
 
'My favourite author' Kate Atkinson 
 
'Achingly moving and real' Guardian 
 
'Beguiling' Hilary Mantel 
 
'Compelling' Elizabeth Day 
 
'Will bring you to tears' Daily Mail 
 
It's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable. 
 
But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations . . .

The classic Sunday Times bestselling novel from the author of Free Love

Late in the Day

The lives of two close-knit couples are irrevocably changed by an untimely death in this bestselling new novel from Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is one of our finest writers. The sensitivity of her psychological insight and understanding is unmatched by anyone writing today... [in Late in the Day], Hadley comes into her own. It’s glorious stuff: moving, beautiful and so enjoyable. All hail Queen Tessa!

Hadley’s wonderful tale [Late in the Day –] measured, ironic, disarmingly perceptive – picks up on all the contradictions of human existence. With Hadley, you know there’s an adult in the room.

The quintessential domestic novel in the most elevated sense… excellently insightful on family dynamics and the intricacies of close friendship.

With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she’s one of the greatest stylists alive… her quietly elegant style and muted wit are triumphs… the everyday tragedies and betrayals of domestic life [are] rendered by Hadley’s prose into something extraordinary… The tone of Late in the Day is perhaps Hadley’s most delicate accomplishment.

You know you are in safe hands with Tessa Hadley who, on a sheer sentence-by-sentence level, delivers more enjoyment than almost any other living writer... you'll be hanging on to every word.

There may be no historical newness to women’s disenchantment with male authority, but it feels new to write about it with this much raw honesty… It’s to her great credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once… Unlocking age-old mysteries in ways both revelatory and inevitable. We’ve seen this before, and we’ve never seen this before, and it’s spectacular.

My favourite novel of 2019 by a long way was Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day… Hadley is a beautifully descriptive writer and a penetrating observer of human nature.

Like all Hadley’s novels, Late in the Day enthrals.

Tessa Hadley picks apart the stitches of marriage, friendship and self with an almost forensic curiosity [in Late in the Day], cementing her place as one of Britain's finest writers of contemporary fiction.

Hadley examines profound areas of life – friendship, marriage, parenthood, grief, love – with a delightful precision, hitting different nails on the head over and over again… Her novel is full of these piercing little moments of revelation… [because of] the crispness of Hadley’s narrative, and the wisdom of her observations: you trust her… [Late in the Day has] a touch of genius.

Another quiet masterpiece from a modern great.

Tessa Hadley is one of your finest writers… [she] approaches her subjects with the sort of attention to detail that a Dutch Golden Age master might bring to a jug and a bowl of fruit… Hadley is the real deal.

A real triumph… a very fine novel.

[Hadley] is a gifted anatomist of human relationships... Her particular genius lies in the elegance and precision with which she captures the fleeting emotion, the passing, indefinable perception or tiny epiphany.

I absolutely loved Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day… There are few British writers who are more acute at a micro-level on the psychology of their characters and I was completely engrossed by this novel.

I loved Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day. Hadley brings the gifts of a still-life painter to her fiction yet manages to produce satisfying twists and turns to her storytelling.

Hadley’s fiction — both long and short — has, with a delicious, detached clarity, observed the shape of relationships: their unconventionality, their transgressions. She is a superb stylist, with none of the pretensions that have latterly been attached to such a term: dispassionate, yet voluptuous in her prose.

With masterly economy, the hallmark of her style… Hadley takes us back and forth in time, and her forensic dissection of friendship, marriage and grief is a mature work by a writer at the top of her game.

Gorgeous, utterly absorbing… More than many of her contemporaries, the British writer Tessa Hadley understands that life is full of moments when the past presses up against the present, and when the present transforms the past. Her brilliant new novel, Late in the Day, explores both with equal urgency.

A great novel... Hadley's wit is Austenesque.

Much like Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway, Hadley is excellent at capturing how the past presses upon each present moment… Her exploration of generational dynamics, between parents and their children, is engrossing… [a] real triumph.

In her masterly seventh novel Tessa Hadley… is possibly most impressive as an analyst of small gestures and an inspired noticer of things… [Hadley’s descriptions] have a hallucinatory vividness and everything in the story seems placed and considered with enormous care, from the smallest detail… to the subtle emotional truths which form the basis of all Hadley’s fiction. With a single flourish, she can make us interested in even the most peripheral characters, and their lives beyond the book.

Like [Tessa Hadley's] previous fiction, Late in the Day explores the seams and fault lines of private life with unsentimental clarity... Hadley tells her story in cool, unemphatic prose, eschewing rhetorical crescendos even at moments of crisis and instead conveying the intensity of her characters’ experience through striking metaphor.

A fine-grained novel of friendship, loss and jealousy.

Sunday Times, *100 Great 21-Century Novels*

As ever, [in Late in the Day] Hadley's psychological insight is remarkable. She is deeply interested in the minutiae of relationships and the way men and women interact... One of our finest living writers, and if you haven't read her yet then you really must.

For 16 years, [Hadley’s] fiction has turned a beady, amused eye on ordinary lives, illuminating them with quiet authority… virtually all her sentences are perfect… an acute and beautifully observed novel.

Hadley's writing is lyrical, perceptive and has great emotional heft. Go read [Late in the Day]!

Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day promises an intriguing study of the way members of a close-knit group of friends react to the sudden, unexpected loss of one of their number.

Hadley’s great strength is her wise, fine-grained observation of interpersonal relations… Hadley moves with ease between perspective and also back and forth in time.

Tessa Hadley is easily one of my favourite authors writing today, and her new novel – Late in the Day... has been highly praised by everyone I know (and, crucially, trust) who's already got their hands on it.

Tessa Hadley is well-known for her inimitable portrayal of character and her latest effort, Late in the Day, is no disappointment... A smart exploration of human nature, desire, and friendship.

A penetrating observer of human behavior, [Hadley] has a gift for dialogue that bristles with what remains unsaid… vividly imagined… Hadley presents a masterly portrait.

Strange, unsettling — eerily beautiful, discomfiting, stay-up-late-addictive, sometimes hair-raising... Always, it’s Hadley’s high-res magnification on the interplay of marital (and friendship, and parental) dynamics that supplies her work’s steady gold.

[Hadley’s] prose is a form of civilised conversation... Late in the Day is a very good novel indeed… [Hadley] knows when to let silence speak, and she has the rare gift of writing dialogue which both rings true and hints at what had been left unsaid but is keenly and sometimes painfully felt.

A clever, compassionate novel that sings to the possibility of renewal in late middle-age.

[A] splendid, perceptive book… Hadley has expertly examined the complications and intimacies of marriage and family in such novels as The Past, The Master Bedroom and Clever Girl. In Late in the Day she continues her persistent exploration of human frailty and resilience, moving easily between the present and the past to reveal the hard edges and silent compromises that shape all relationships.

Her prose has the penetrating quality of Henry James at his most accessible… and is alert, as Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen were, to how time sculpts, warps or casually destroys us... A quiet triumph.

Late in the Day is confident, brilliant, dark and interesting.

Tessa Hadley’s brilliant new novel – an event that always sparks joy… [– is an] elegantly written, ironically witty book… [Hadley] is constantly being favourably compared to Virginia Woolf – as well as Jane Austen and Henry James.

This is not a novel filled with incident, its pleasures are perception, insight and the intense examination of emotions… A very grown-up read.

Tessa Hadley’s compelling new novel, Late in the Day, is a subtle, delicate evocation of modern life… Hadley’s observation is pin-sharp: whether describing a contemporary student’s house, a late-night drive, or simply a quiet room with only the reading light turned on, there is a shapely intelligence at work… There is something of Iris Murdoch’s fierce attention to the physical here.

Tessa Hadley has become literary fiction’s chronicler-in-chief of the lives and loves of the English middle classes… Conveying their lifestyle with shrewd economy… Hadley relies on patient, persuasive observation to draw us into a satisfying family drama of hopes and regrets as viewed from the fag end of middle age.

Tessa Hadley’s great success as a novelist lies in… examining her characters with an unusual degree of psychological subtlety. Her particular strength is to combine a deep excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects.

Clever and thoughtful… [Late in the Day] is wholly impressive.

Hadley… [is] authoritative and powerful… a complex story structure juxtaposing present and past and featuring carefully timed revelations.

This is the perfect example of domestic fiction done well… Hadley's prose is measured, spare and utterly perceptive of the human condition.

The language is poetic and beautifully crafted… [and it] is the measured intimacy of Hadley's language that allows her to capture in so few words, the whirring emotions that stir beyond the surface.

Exquisitely written… A slow burn that’s as elegant as it is crushingly emotional.

Late in the Day… [is] beautifully written with moments of real tenderness — I found it immensely enjoyable and thought-provoking.

A wonderfully involving, intelligent and subtle.

One of the best literary offerings so far this year.

UK Press Syndication, *Summer Reads of 2019*

Tessa Hadley is one of those rare authors who keep getting better and better… the writing is joyous, and the conclusion will set your heart singing.

Hadley’s prose is so elegant, her quiet observations on ageing, adultery, motherhood and art so penetrating, it is pure reading pleasure.

Unflinching, intelligent and fascinating

Hadley’s elegant sentence-making is pure joy, combining scathing observation with careful compassion in a novel.

Late in the Day will delight fans of Tessa’s work and is an excellent introduction to her style for those unfamiliar with her novels. It’s a gentle yet impactful and deeply thought-provoking book that will leave you reflecting on your own choices and relationships – and makes a perfect beginning to a new year of reading.

A brilliant, beautiful novel populated by multifaceted characters and lit by Hadley's insight and skill.

Reflective, poignant and beautifully written, it reminds us that the constant in life is change.

[A] compelling novel… Hadley captures the way old feelings, longings and hidden secrets unravel tight-knit relationships.

'Unflinching, intelligent and fascinating' Marian Keyes 
 
The lives of two close-knit couples are irrevocably changed by an untimely death in this Sunday Times bestselling novel 
 
Alex and Christine and Zach and Lydia have been inseparable since their twenties. From student house-shares and grubby pubs to proper homes and grown-up careers, the two couples' lives have been interlinked for decades. Then one evening, Alex and Christine receive a call from a distraught Lydia. Zach is dead. 
 
Inconsolable, Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine. But instead of their loss bringing them closer, the three of them find that love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness as old entanglements and resentments rise from the past. 
 
'A fine-grained novel of friendship, loss and jealousy' Sunday Times, *100 Great 21-Century Novels*

'One of the most subtle and sublime contemporary writers' Vogue

Married Love

Tessa Hadley has joined the ranks of Posy Simmonds, Helen Simpson, Colm Toibin, Katherine Mansfield and Rachel Cusk as a national treasure.

'The ghost of Katherine Mansfield hovers lightly over these deceptively delicate snapshots' Metro 
 
A beguiling collection of short stories from award-winning author of Free Love, The Past and Late in the Day, Tessa Hadley. 
 
Lottie announces at the breakfast table that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is nineteen but looks five years younger. Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a composer of religious music and lecturer at Lottie's university, forty-five years her senior.It is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties tested but holding, and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments. Evoking a world that expands beyond the pages, it marks the beginning of what is an astonishing collection to treasure. 
 
'The most perceptive chronicler since George Eliot of avid, unworldly young women' Guardian

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure

She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today

The stories collected in Married Love tend to announced themselves with a crash ... before resolving into quieter reflections, like musical overtures in which strings follow brass. Whether it is in examining the mellowing of a marriage in the title piece, or recounting the progress of a one night stand ("In the Cave"), Hadley writes of ordinary lives with a gracefulness unequalled among her peers

Occasionally – very occasionally – a book feels like a gift, something unexpected, exhilarating, life-enhancing. Tessa Hadley’s second collection of short stories is such a book

One of the most subtle and sublime contemporary writers

The most perceptive chronicler since George Eliot of avid, unworldly young women

Hadley is a writer of exceptional intelligence and skill Only Alice Munro and Colm Toibin, among all the working short story writers I’m aware of, are so adept at portraying whole lives in a few thousand words. With Married Love, Hadley joins their company as one of the most clear-sighted chroniclers of contemporary emotional journeys

Tessa Hadley writes like a dream, the prose precise, but funny, too

These stories are shored up with sentences and paragraphs that demand immediate re-reading for their cleverness and warmth…This party is well worth attending

This collection shows a writer quietly growing in style, perception and grace.  She conveys to the reader that rare ability to see completely into someone else’s head

The ghost of Katherine Mansfield hovers lightly over these deceptively delicate snapshots which zero in on the much maligned territory of the domestic and make it new and vital again

The new collection of short stories from award-winning author Tessa Hadley. 
 
Lottie announces at the breakfast table that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is nineteen but looks five years younger. Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a composer of religious music and lecturer at Lottie's university, forty-five years her senior.It is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties tested but holding, and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments. Evoking a world that expands beyond the pages, it marks the beginning of what is an astonishing collection to treasure.

Bad Dreams and Other Stories

The dazzling new collection of stories from the prize-winning author of The Past and The London Train.

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure.

Tessa Hadley has become one of this country’s great contemporary novelists ... possessed of a psychological subtlety reminiscent of Henry James, and an ironic beadiness worthy of Jane Austen

One of Britain’s finest writers… Hadley’s clear-sighted observations about people’s foibles and her ability to whip up an atmosphere with only a tent pole and a pair of furry handcuffs is something to behold.

Hadley is a writer whose reputation grows with every book… This new collection of short stories reconfirms her remarkable talent… Hadley excels at both genres, brilliant at conveying emotion and with an uncanny ability to get under her character’s skin… These stories brim with a keen intelligence and linger in the mind long after you close the book.

[It is] lapidary, full of the most gorgeous sentences and brilliant observations.

Hadley’s quiet rise to become one of Britain’s best writers is further confirmed by her new collection, Bad Dreams and Other Stories… These well-turned, exceptionally nuanced pieces are solidly evocative of place, period…and sensory detail.

Compassionate and luminous, Hadley sees… us all: our travails, our fantasies and our small joys.

Tessa Hadley’s short stories, Bad Dreams, are simple and artful and leave you wanting more.

It is exquisite, haunting… This is writing of great nuance and psychological acuity… It combines acerbic social observation and wry humour with moments of breathtaking delicacy and tenderness.

The ordinary becomes extraordinary in these masterly short stories by one of the most brilliant and under-read writers of our time.

Hadley has an anthropological gift; she notices the small, regular gestures and responses of the everyday, and demonstrates their enormous impact on our perception of the world, and thus, every relationship we have.

The absorbing nature of Hadley’s novels is demonstrated… through her ability to capture the intricate details of domestic life and make them interesting… The sense of nostalgia she creates and the wonderfully descriptive storytelling compel you to finish each story.

This is a delightful introduction to the absorbing writing of Tessa Hadley and her ability to make domestic life interesting.

Full of… subtle, wise, finely grained observations.

It is the quiet, reflective moments that make Tessa Hadley’s stories so poignant and insightful… there is a psychological heft to her observations.

Hadley’s writing is direct and a pleasure to read, and she has an uncanny ability to capture the intricate details of everyday life.

A new collection… demonstrates once again Hadley’s unerring craft… Hadley’s agile sentences never seek to dazzle, yet showcase her unerring craft nonetheless.

The women in these marvelous stories share quiet lives, complex feelings and, above all, secrets – some that can do real damage… Every situation captivates; every carefully chosen word rings true.

Tessa Hadley is one of the most sympathetic, insightful observers of human nature writing today.

Tessa Hadley is an acute observer of everyday dramas that have a sinister undercurrent of destruction. Although these tales are thoroughly middle-class, there is nothing cosy about Hadley’s worlds.

A collection showing all her trademark qualities of pin-sharp observation and arresting expression.

Spare, slightly chilly… Most of these 10 stories deliver cool shocks, but all are buoyed by an undercurrent of wry humour and pleasingly mellow irony.

The stories in Tessa Hadley’s Bad Dreams…quivered with similar suppressed emotion, whether about grown-up sisters silently feuding, or a neglected schoolgirl whose longing for “life” sees her fall in with a bunch of predatory university students.

Brilliant evocations of female frustration… The disappointments and misunderstandings cut deep. Hadley evokes time, place and emotion superbly well; she’s a great storyteller.

She deserves all the prizes. Hadley is psychologically acute, drily witty and absolutely wonderful on place. Her relative obscurity, then, is an unfathomable mystery . . . The female characters at the heart of her novels – clever, impulsive, not always wholly likable – are so finely drawn, I can never get them out of my head

The dazzling collection of stories from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love and Late in the Day. 
 
**WINNER OF THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE** 
 
 
Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby. A housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. A young girl accepts a lift in a car with a group of strangers. An old friend brings bad news to a dinner party. 
 
In these gripping and unsettling stories, the ordinary is made extraordinary and the real things that happen to people turn out to be every bit as mysterious as their dreams. 
 
'These well-turned, exceptionally nuanced pieces are solidly evocative of place, period...and sensory detail' Sunday Times 
 
'Few writers give me such consistent pleasure' Zadie Smith

Clever Girl

From the author of The Past, Tessa Hadley’s 5th novel now re-jacketed for a whole new audience

The fifth novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love, The Past and Late in the Day, Clever Girl is a tale of an ordinary life made extraordinary by the gifts of Tessa Hadley. 
 
Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so. 
 
Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously, smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. When she meets Val, he seems to her to embody everything she longs for - glamour, ideas, excitement and the thrill of the unknown. But these things come at a price and one that Stella despite all her cleverness doesn't realise until it is too late. 
 
'Tessa Hadley writes like a dream' Daily Mail

As  discrete entities, Hadley’s short stories are intense, miniature novels in themselves; bound together in a novel, they become quietly  brilliant, offering an incisive exploration into how life’s individuals  episodes add up to a meaningful whole.

Hadley is a writer of exceptional intelligence and skill and, for all the apparent conventionality of her vision, hers is a subtly subversive talent.

There is something reassuring yet deliciously unexpected about a Tessa Hadley novel.

The most astute and sympathetic of writers.

This novel is the life story of an ordinary, middle-aged woman – Stella. Only that she is not ordinary because Tessa Hadley is writing her into existence and is behind her like a following wind… Hadley writes as a masterly illustrator might draw.

Hadley’s  achievement in her fifth novel is to express a life significantly  shaped and often constrained by discomfort – physical, mental, emotional  – but a life that nonetheless progresses, mutating from circumstance to  circumstance, decade to decade.

Hadley…has a genius for pithy analysis.

A continuous pleasure to read... Reinforced by some quiet but very clever narrative arrangement.

Tessa Hadley writes like a dream, the prose precise but funny; her psychology always seems spot on.

Hadley writes beautifully of the unpredictable mess of life.

Understated, elegant writing and acute observation of ordinary life are Tessa Hadley’s strengths.

What holds the attention is not a dramatic, twisting tale providing sudden revelations but an intimate narrative voice that renders people, places and experiences in vivid detail. Clever Girl is a remarkable novel by one of this country’s finest, if most unassuming talents.

Hadley is at her best when recalling how it felt growing up 40 years ago, but also how maternal bonds both reward and frustrate.

Entirely in keeping with Tessa Hadley’s subtle, intelligent and realistic storytelling.

Hadley imagines her characters, and enters their minds, with wonderful clarity and truthfulness.

The best novel I read, by a mile… It's so finely worked, like emotional needlepoint, though she handles time masterfully, too. Stella, its heroine, seems always to be moving towards the light, and I read the last 20 pages with tears pouring down my cheeks.

Tessa Hadley writes beautifully – she can take you right inside a person's mind... The stories are exquisitely told and full of detail.

Looking for the next Kate Atkinson or Alice Munro? Pick up this lovely novel.

If I had to recommend one novel to you this year, it would be Clever Girl.

Tessa Hadley makes "ordinary" lives extraordinary... Perhaps her finest novel yet.

She deserves all the prizes. Hadley is psychologically acute, drily witty and…absolutely wonderful on place… It’s a remarkable novel, not least for the seamless way Hadley handles the passage of time, though its chief bit of daring for me is its expression of what cleverness feels like, and the impact this may have on the trajectory of an ordinary woman’s life… I read the novel’s last 30 pages with tears rolling down my cheeks, a rare thing for me.

Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so. Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously, smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. When she meets Val, he seems to her to embody everything she longs for – glamour, ideas, excitement and the thrill of the unknown. But these things come at a price and one that Stella despite all her cleverness doesn’t realise until it is too late.

Tessa Hadley

After the Funeral

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