Clever Girl

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

Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie

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.

Francesca Angelini, Sunday Times

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

Edmund Gordon, Observer

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

Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph

The most astute and sympathetic of writers.

Susanna Rustin, Guardian

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.

Kate Kellaway, Observer

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.

Alex Clark, Times Literary Supplement

Hadley…has a genius for pithy analysis.

Matthew Dennison, The Times

Gorgeously erudite prose.

Catherine Taylor, Sunday Telegraph