Tessa Hadley
Author
Books
Books
Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly acclaimed novels and three short-story collections. In 2016 she was awarded the Windham Campbell Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. She teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in The New Yorker, Granta and other magazines.
Current Publication: THE PARTY, Jonathan Cape - 31st October 2024
An irresistible novella about two sisters and a night that changes everything, from the master chronicler of our heart’s hidden desires.
Evelyn had the surprising thought that bodies were sometimes wiser than the people inside them. She’d have liked to impress somebody with this idea, but couldn’t explain it.
On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students’ party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn’s misgivings.
As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives.
Praise for Tessa Hadley:
‘Few writers give me such consistent pleasure’ - Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud
‘Tessa Hadley is my favourite author’ - Kate Atkinson, author of Life after Life
‘Hadley’s extraordinary skill [is] making both surface life and deep interiors come fully alive’ - Colm Tóibín
‘Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book’ - Hilary Mantel
Tessa Hadley on beginning her first novella with her story VINCENT'S PARTY:
'It is my first novella. My publisher wondered if I’d ever write a novella, and, even as I determinedly wasn’t interested, this three-part story fell fully formed into my mind. You don’t refuse such a gift when it’s offered. I always intended the first of the three chapters to work as a free-standing story, and I hope it doesn’t read as incomplete. Those two girls jumping off the bottom of the fire escape seemed a conclusion in itself, the kind of last word you’re always looking for to end a story. But, of course, there are always more words beyond the last word, if you want to find them. There’s so much more to tell about Evelyn and Moira. At the same time, the short story’s last gesture should feel adequate to itself, a completion.' The New Yorker
Fiction
| Publication Details | Notes |
|---|---|
2019 Jonathan Cape | 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. |
2017 Jonathan Cape | 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. |
2015 Jonathan Cape | 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. |
2013 Jonathan Cape | 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. |
2012 Jonathan Cape | 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. |
2011 Jonathan Cape | A novel in two parts, separate but wound together around a single moment, examining in vivid detail two lives stretched between two cities. |
2007 Jonathan Cape | This intricate, graceful novel explores the tangled web of connections between parents and children, lovers and friends. |
2007 Jonathan Cape | Everyday life in these stories crackles with the electricity sparking between men and women, between parents and children, between friends. |
2004 Jonathan Cape | This book firmly establishes Tessa Hadley among the great contemporary observers of the human mind and heart. |
2002 Jonathan Cape | 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. |