Tessa Hadley

Alexandr and Christine and Zachary and Lydia have been close friends since they first met in their twenties. Thirty years later, when profound loss strikes them, instead of bringing them closer the three discover over the following months that it warps their relationships, as old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness.

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.

Four siblings meet up in their grandparents’ old house for three long, hot summer weeks. But under the idyllic surface lie shattering tensions.Over the course of the holiday, a familiar way of life falls apart forever.

Clever Girl follows the story of Stella, from her childhood as the daughter of a single mother in a Bristol bedsit in the 1960s into the mysterious shallows of her middle age. The story is full of drama – violent deaths, an abrupt end to Stella’s schooldays, two sons by different fathers who aren’t around to see the boys grow up – but as ever it is her observation of ordinary lives, of the way men and women think and feel and relate to one another, that dazzles. Yes, you think. This is how it is.

A collection of short stories showcasing all of Tessa Hadley's skill in depicting personal relationships and scenes of domesticity in a powerful and new way.

A novel in two parts, separate but wound together around a single moment, examining in vivid detail two lives stretched between two cities.

This intricate, graceful novel explores the tangled web of connections between parents and children, lovers and friends.

Everyday life in these stories crackles with the electricity sparking between men and women, between parents and children, between friends.

This book firmly establishes Tessa Hadley among the great contemporary observers of the human mind and heart.

At the centre of Tessa Hadley's extraordinary first novel is Clare, a young mother of three, who finds that marriage to a good man no longer satisfies her and embarks headlong on a disastrous affair.