A collection that features domestic dramas, generational sagas, wrenching love affairs and epiphanies.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2012: Novels and stories being such different beasts, it's rare to find a writer gifted at both: the quick sketches and implications of a short piece; the steady build and satisfying arc of an extended one. Four-time novelist Tessa Hadley deftly handles any length, as her outstanding new collection confirms. Despite the book's title, Married Love , these dozen taut stories are decidedly unsentimental. In "Friendly Fire," a middle-aged mother cleans toilets in a warehouse, reflecting on her hapless husband and soldier son; in "Post Production," a film director dies suddenly in his kitchen, leaving a bizarre tangle of relationships behind. Hadley has a special talent for opening lines: "After the sex, he fell asleep," reads one. Only a writer at the top of her game could make you care what happens next. You will. --Mia Lipman
Review
“Filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions of class, conducted with symphonic intensity and complexity….[An] understatedly beautiful collection….Extraordinarily well-made.” (*Stacey D'Erasmo, New York Times Book Review * )
“A British writer whose work probes the dangers and joys of family life, Tessa Hadley writes like a dream, even if some of her stories can haunt you like a nightmare….Hadley’s measured, perfectly controlled prose masterfully chronicles her characters’ turmoil; these stories are gemlike and unforgettable.” (*Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe * )
“Hadley’s power...is best felt as she teases out the often dangerous crackles in the air and cracks in the heart. There’s a louche tautness to her prose...” (Helen Davies,Sunday Times (London) )
“[Hadley’s stories] are often like movie clips of lives in transit, their small shifts of focus yielding up flashes of psychological insight. . . . Hadley excels at the domestic context, at pinpointing the particular quiddity on which an individual character turns; at marking the tiny swings of allegiance in human relationships.” (*Rachel Hore, The Independent * )
“One of the most interesting writer around....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.” (*Philip Womack, The Spectator * )
“Only Alice Munro and Colm Tóibin, among all the working short story writer 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.” (*Edmund Gordon, The Guardian * )
“Domestic relationships are the stuff of these delightfully understated, tightly sprung stories.” (*Fanny Blake, Woman and Home * )
“Married Love…could more accurately be described as a concentration, not a collection, of short stories. The stories here are, in effect, a dozen novels in miniature....There is a grand sweep and an emotional charge that brings to mind DH Lawrence.” (Elena Seymenliyska,Daily Telegraph (London) )
“There is not a lot of domestic bliss to be found in these finely rendered stories, but there are many small moments of everyday life made recognizable by an exceptional storyteller. Highly recommended.” (Library Journal )
“A subtly incisive vision and the ability to conjure full fictional scenarios in limited spaces characterize the new collection by a noted British writer….Shrewd, insightful, unpredictable, Hadley’s stories successfully plumb the complicated daily deeps.” (Kirkus )
“Hadley’s command of the telling detail, the unspoken riposte, and the subtle interpersonal struggles that fuel everyday human actions infuses this collection with both saucy fire and sobering fatalism.” (Booklist )
“Hadley excels at the poignantly comic scene and the dangling ending that somehow still satisfies. These 12 touching tales showcase her gifts.” (Meredith Maran,People (3 ½ stars) )
“Her talent is to take these small details of everyday life and build them into stirring narratives….Hadley gives space to the smallest emotional currents, allowing them to expand.” (*Susannah Meadows, New York Times * )
“What Hadley’s stories share with Munro’s is an extraordinary ability to capture whole worlds - the hopes, disappointments, complexity and arc of characters’ lives - in concise prose that never feels rushed.” (*Heller McAlpin, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review * )
“Twisting her pen with words so skilled and a sensitivity so finely honed it takes mere fragments to convey the lifetime of a character to the reader, Hadley brings us twelve of the finest short stories in print today.” (*Andrea Huehnerhoff, Sacramento Book Review * )
“A feast of angst and disappointment.” (Evening Standard (London) )