New from British author Tessa Hadley: The Past
by eapearce
British author Tessa Hadley is known for her ability to poetically describe the messiness and complications of everyday life, especially within familial relationships. In her most recent novel, The Past, Hadley works her magic again, telling the story of four adult siblings who gather at an old family country house for the summer. The ultimate goal of the holiday is to determine whether to keep the vicarage in the family or to sell it, but of course, much happens over the course of the steamy months spent at the decaying home.
The three sisters, Harriet, Fran and Alice, are curious about their brother Roland’s third wife and eager to feel her out as well as to visit with and care for their teenaged niece, Molly. Fran’s children run wild over the course of the summer, spying on Molly and her new love interest and making an unsettling discovery in an abandoned home in the woods. Harriet, the eldest sister, was planning to spend much of the vacation relaxing in solitude, but instead finds herself enthralled with one of the house guests with a passion she has never experienced before. Relations amongst the family members and house guests are all at once loving and turbulent as old wounds are reopened and resentments that had been nearly forgotten are remembered. Hadley artfully delves deeply into the emotions and thoughts of her characters, while also luxuriously describing the natural world around them. BookPage calls The Past “a novel of remarkable skill and scope,” and it's one that readers will not want to miss.
Hadley is also the author of Clever Girl, Married Love and Other Stories, The London Train, and five other works of fiction, all available at the AADL.
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