The Master Bedroom

by Tessa Hadley

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTIONKate Flynn has always been a clever girl, brought up to believe in herself as something special. Now Kate is forty-three and has given up her university career in London to come home and look after her mother at Firenze, their big house by a lake in Cardiff. When Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days, she begins to obsess about she knows it's because she's bored and hasn't got anything else to do, but she can't stop. Adapting to a new way of life, the connections Kate forges in her new home are to have painful consequences, as the past begins to cast its long shadow over the present...'Bewitching... A prose stylist of quite outstanding talent with a gift for psychological acuity and an ability to encapsulate the human condition' Guardian

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, British Literature, 21st Century, Contemporary

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 24, 2007

About the author

Tessa Hadley is the author of Sunstroke and Other Stories, and the novels The Past, Late in the Day and Clever Girl. She lives in Cardiff, Wales, and teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

People get so grumpy at Tessa Hadley! At least, people on Goodreads.

I read this, yet another of her exquisitely rendered stories, and sifted through people's reactions, so many of which are grumpy, and I think, gee people, honestly, what more do you want from a writer, than what Tessa Hadley has on offer: complex characters, complex relationships, people making bad decisions and living with them, marriages at the collapse-point, gorgeous prose, hauntingly insightful observations, the list goes on.

So this one, I believe, may have disappointed many people because it wasn't as salacious as what the publishers promise. We are led to believe from the synopsis that some woman is bedding both father and son, and ooooh... let's see what happens in that master bedroom, shall we? Let's compare experience with youth, and let's be a bunch of titillated voyeurs in the corner of the room together.

Alas, that's not what that book is, it's got generational trauma and patterns at the core of it, and people struggling to tell their truth, and the messiness of life and connection.

It also may have disappointed people because they didn't get an either/or ending. Father? Son? Ecstasy-a-permanent in the good old master bedroom?

Or because the behaviour of fictional characters upset the moral order in readers' heads, perhaps. Writing and reading about fictional characters behaving outside of what you consider acceptable isn't an endorsement of said behaviour, for goodness' sake.

To those people, I just have to shake my head.

That's not to say I didn't have any quibbles with the story. I did. I found the basis of attraction between Kate and the father, and between Kate and the son, rather weak. I was far more intrigued at what was happening between David and Suzie - Suzie mysteriously absent and bohemian all of a sudden - and we only got little snippets of that here and there. It's not my favourite of her books (Late in the Day blew me out of the water!).

However, Hadley did work her magic on me here, and despite my quibbles, I was immediately drawn into the story. I both inhabited the characters' worlds, and admired the writing. And, apparently, felt compelled to defend her in my review to any nay-sayers. :D

3.5 stars

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this right up to chapter 11, the last but one. Chapter 12 left me cold and disheartened. This only reveals, I suppose that I am an Incurable Romantic. So, when Kate Flynn has sex with 17 year old Jamie, son of the man to whom she is really attracted - David, we know it's going to end badly - but Hadley strings us along, we (I) keep hoping that it's NOT so bad as all that - Nope - it's totally terrible. Even David, when he realizes what's going on, can not actually bring himself to say it, think it - ditto Kate.

So, what possesses a 43 year old, clever, suave, sophisticated and independent, professor of Slavic languages with Bohemian inclinations to allow that to happen - what was Kate thinking - or not?

This really is the crux of this novel - we are invited to believe that Kate would succumb. There aren't any extenuating circumstances, no one was drunk; she'd had plenty of affairs in her adult life, so she wasn't new to seduction, sex or romance - so why? Hadley's whole story spins on this one moment of weakness - and I suppose that's the deal - what happens when that happens? But it's compounded - it turns into a regular thing.

Parallel to the Kate/Jamie thread, there is David's estrangement from this wife Susie. And Kate's elderly mother, Billie, who comes from a rather glorious, Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian background married to Sam Liebowic, now dead, but who made good selling hosiery in the Welsh valleys, and Cardiff, where our modern tale is told. The story centres around the old family home, Firenze, called after the Italian town where Billie spent her honeymoon. There is a lake and park below the stupendous house and nothing has changed in it since Kate and her mother were born there.

I liked Kate - she's feisty, unapologetic, determined to do what she wants and enjoy herself. Self-interested, self-serving some might say, but I found her entertaining, perhaps in real life, she wouldn't suit. Here's an extract, where Kate, has spurned David but would really like to be free of Jamie so she can encourage the father. They have been invited to Carol's for dinner

Carol is concerned for her brother. She knows he is upset about his marital difficulties, and innocently brings the two together knowing they share an interest in music?

Kate knew that she was in the wrong mood. She was hot because she had walked over, and she had chosen to wear a tight-fitting black dress; Carol and the other woman, Angharad, were in T-shirts and trousers. Kate explained that the taxi driver had been late bringing her sitter.
-Have you left children? Angharad the publisher asked sympathetically.
-No, senile old person.

Kate stalked on loud heels into the kitchen to find gin. David half got up out of his chair to greet her, but when she sat down she made sure she didn't sit by him; she knew her discomfort settled on the conversation like a cloud, despite the wide-open windows ... she turned her attention to Colin, who was nervous in the strong light of it, mentioning his absent wife sooner than was strictly necessary. Because he seemed to want to, Kate let him believe that her parents had come as refugees from Hitler's Germany: his professional respect struck in.

-You know why we Jews play the violin so well? She explained loudly. So that we can pack our livelihood in one small case and get out at a moment's notice. Don't I play the violin well, David?

David with his mouth full was at a disadvantage; he had been applying himself earnestly and silently to his plate. He nodded his head with obliging eagerness, putting the back of his hand over his mouth, swallowing hard.

-Although, he added, scrupulously honest, when his mouth was clear, I don't suppose it's that easy to earn a living -playing the violin, I mean- unless one has professional training.
-Don't be so literal, dear, said Carol. Kate only wants you to flatter her. She isn't really calculating for a fascist takeover.
-Sorry, said David, of course not. She's a very good amateur player.
-Colin will have to flatter me, Kate said. David's the truth teller. He never will.

And there we have it all over again - those never ending differences between male and female which prove to be such fertile ground for all novels.

I wish I could do a poll on this novel and ask the basic question - anyone know a woman who would do this? I reviewed my list of female friends and acquaintances - I think not - or as Kate resolved to make it her deepest, darkest secret, perhaps it's the kind of thing that just isn't discussed - even amongst women.

The other element which was extremely well done was David's gradual distancing from his wife. He asks her several times to explain, and frustratingly she says - "I can't. I don't know. Just don't touch me." She is a very unsympathetic character. It's only towards the end, when a chance meeting with Kate allows us, the reader, to hear her perspective, but even then her remarkably callous behaviour towards her husband leaves me, at least completely rooting for David. This I thought was clever narrative positioning allowing us to see David at his best, and giving us access to his feelings of frustration and bewilderment and inevitably turning towards Kate.

The other important character, Jamie is less available - we're given only the minimal details of his thoughts and character - minimal? - he is only 17. He simply fills the role of youth - insistent, healthy, expected to do well in his 'A' levels. I suppose we are to understand, mature for his years - I don't get the attraction. I just don't.

I've written the review - and on reading my synopsis - it sounds too silly for words. Still I enjoyed the characterization - Kate and David especially - you could see that it might work - but Fate has stepped in. Fate appears in this novel in various guises - a swan crashing into Susie's car on the motorway, a something like swan, doing the same with David.

Oh No!- I've made it worse - it actually is quite a good Romance read - high-brow Romance??

[Claire Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, I love how Tessa Hadley writes. Her novels and stories are so well-crafted. The story is slight here (and oddly similar to All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan which I read recently), and very much character led, but the characters are incredibly real. As was the rambling, crumbling old house the protagonist lives in, with a turret and generations-worth of 'stuff' in every cupboard.
Highly recommended.

[Marion Husband · Rating 1 out of 5]

Is this novel for real? It seems like a parody of pc, progressive thinking. This bunch of terribly, terribly middle class fools and snobs bored the wits out of me. God alone knows why I finished it, pure masochism because I’m feeling low and under the weather and couldn’t move from the sofa even to reach for the tv remote or my iPad....a long long dull read about virtue signallers being inexplicably idiotic. The lead woman - Kate? - is appalling and all the others flakey or dull. Terrible.

[Kyle C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tessa Hadley is an amazing story-teller, comparable to Iris Murdoch, Barbara Pym, and Julian Barnes. Like Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea or A Severed Head, Tessa Hadley's novel is a troubling story about libertine academics, taboo passions and outré desires. Her protagonist, Kate Flynn, has left her job as a university lecturer and moved back to her old baronial home in Cardiff to look after her mother who has recently been diagnosed with dementia; after she reconnects with an old friend from her childhood, she briefly hopes to have a fling with him—but she ultimately has an affair with his nineteen-year-old son. It's a typical Murdoch scenario—a transgressive but cooly insouciant academic who has fallen into a comically incestuous love-triangle. Like Julian Barnes, Hadley writes about the unrequited desires and erotic memories and fantasies that haunt people for decades. But in its execution, Hadley is much more like Pym—her setting is parochial, a small village, an old estate, with a small cast of cultured characters gossiping and exchanging witty banter at symphony performances and refined soirees. Hadley's style is sharply observational with soft ironic touches.

This is not a Mrs Robinson situation. Kate is withering, sarcastic and cynical. She doesn't beguile the young man; she belittles him. His youthfulness doesn't attract her. In fact, she meekly acquiesces to his advances simply because it helps her sleep. She doesn't want a relationship; she just wants the respite of his affections, something that interrupts the rural humdrum of her new life, even though she knows it will ruin her chances of a real romance. She repeatedly mocks his inexperience and naivety and she is afraid of those moments when she sees the adult man lurking inside him (someone who will one day "expect his words to be taken seriously"). She looks at him and is constantly imagining what he will look like when he is older, what kind of a man he will be. Her desire seems to be proleptic—she is attracted to the man he could become. I love the paragraph,

I'll bet lots of girls like you. You're just the type. With your private life only showing in little clues and signs, barely enough for someone to make a cult of. Cruelly indifferent, just because you're not trying to be. Your lovely wide child's face: thick curdy skin, like a hero in a fairytale, gleaming in expectancy. When you're a man it will be a moody face, d'you know that?

Her tone is condescendingly didactic. She speaks with all-knowing smugness, as though she knows exactly what kind of a man he will be. Immediately after this quotation, she then proceeds to explain what "curds" are, morphing back into her professorial mode of lecturing. Hadley turns the conventional stuff of a romance drama upside-down—Kate doesn't want love in the end. She doesn't need marriage to feel complete. She doesn't pursue these love affairs out of midlife desperation with predatory cunning (the stereotype of "the cougar") nor is she some tragically lonely eccentric (the stereotype of "the spinster").

In this, Hadley is similar to Barbara Pym whose aging protagonists rue their loveless old age but discover joy in their own independence (think Quartet in Autumn and Excellent Women). But Hadley lacks Pym's maudlin tone. In this novel, Hadley has created a uniquely complex figure who is driven by her own intellectual motives and who makes no apologies for her selfishness.

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

What you think you want turns out to be just as undesirable as what you had. And getting what you think you want only leads to regret. Enough said.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Kate Flynn, Hadley has created a refreshing protagonist, a woman in her 40s, who is not pining for a relationship or a child. Kate, a university professor, has abandoned London, her longtime home, and her career, to return to Wales to care for her aging mother, Billie, in the home in which both were born and grew up. Yes, Kate is there for Billie, but for herself as well. Tessa Hadley is a wonderful observer, and psychologically acute. I love reading her work, for sentences such as this: Kate has a "chilly vision of herself on the slop down from summits that had hardly happened." It took me some time before I settled into The Master Bedroom, which is fine. I think too many readers today require that a book instantly opens up to them, immediately sweeps them away, when sometimes the story requires a slower entry. In this novel, Hadley renders the dramatic actions within the rhythms of everyday life. Much happens in this novel, a swan causes a multi-car accident, a marriage seems to crater and burn, romantic crushes, ostensibly inappropriate love, and yet this isn't a book you read with heart in mouth. You read for the story, for the style, for characters so clear in miniature.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

i started the master bedroom, hesitantly b/c i'd read other not so great reviews on a few other book sites, but i really really enjoyed it. the characters, while not exactly likable, were fascinating and real. the dialogue was snappy (i thought the lack of quotes would bother me but it didn't). i was prepared to dislike kate, who was entirely self centered and vain, yet she grew on me. i really enjoyed ms. hadley's writing, she envoked a sense of place very well. even tho some of the characters were less than appealing, she was able to convey their inner emotions, making them very human. i was, i'll admit, a little perplexed by suzie, not sure what was going on with her; in fact, i think her storyline was a little weak, but it did contribute to david's therefore serving a purpose. am looking forward to reading more of tessa hadley's work. p.s. i would agree with allisonmariecat's review, wherein she says the book description sounds "seamy" but it turns out to be anything but...

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read three Tessa Hadley novels back to back at the time of the publication of her 2019 novelLate in the Day
” Sex dominates the ‘plots’. Couplings abound, and since the reader can spot them coming a mile off, and their total recklessness and destructiveness, it rather diminishes any deeper or more original messages.”
The first of the books I read was The London Train from which review I pasted the above reaction. Disappointingly so much of that reading experience, and review sentiment applies to The Master Bedroom. A goodreader friend of mine, Laura, describes Hadley’s writing as “sort of high brow Mills & Boon”.
The more Hadley I read, the more formulaic I find the writing:
Marriages where the mutual respect and excitement has faded. Children prolong relationships, but don’t do much else. Unsuitable friends are around every corner ; maverick singletons crop up; adultery features as a temporary thrill in mostly wasted lives.
As an aide memoirs I thought about summarising the shifting dynamics between the various characters. As I started to do so I realised how silly and unconvincing it all was.
A pity, because the writing is good, even if the plots and relationships described fail to engage the reader.

[Mldgross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well I finished it, but I didn't like it.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few contemporary writers can lay bare the inner workings of modern families like Tessa Hadley. Her novels and short stories are remarkable for their insight and psychological acuity, revealing small intense dramas that in her skilled hands become something epic. Hadley’s first book, Accidents in the Home, wasn’t published until her mid-forties and it’s clear to see that this level of understanding of family dynamics is the product of a life lived. The Master Bedroom, her third novel, tells the complex story of two families brought back into contact by Kate Flynn’s return to her native Cardiff (Hadley’s own home city) from London. What follows is a gripping drama of human desire, duty and frailty. The Master Bedroom also reinforced just what a prose stylist Hadley is: her writing is effortlessly beautiful, and not just when she is writing about human relationships; her descriptions of the natural world and urban environments are equally affecting.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

I borrowed this book off of a communal shelf at Jane Austen's House -- and I didn't recognize the author, or expect much from it. It was one of those books, though, that proved to be a really absorbing read.
The protagonist is a 43 year old woman (as am I), and I'm aware of being drawn to stories who feature someone like me -- a trait of children's reading, really. Anyway, I read this fact on the blurb on the back of the book -- and that's what made me pick out the book.

In this case, the protagonist (Kate Flynn) is an unmarried woman, an academic, a sophisticated city person, an only child -- who finds herself coming to several dead ends in her life, while simultaneously being needed by her mother (who is alone and suffering from dementia). The setting is the childhood home: a crumbling, once grand, house in Cardiff.
The mother-daughter dynamic was interesting to me, as was the theme of dementia (which is having some impact in my life). The book really explored the tension of a daughter suddenly having to be the caretaker of her parent, while at the same time emotionally regressing in a variety of ways.
The book had quite a lot of emotional pull to it, particularly in the last third -- when something rather surprising (even shocking) happens.

Just as a bit of stylistic trivia, the author, rather strangely, used dashes instead of quotation marks. I found it distracting and confusing at times. I've never seen that in any novel before.

[Nette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this was a total waste of a Borders 30% off coupon. It's a high-brow, "literary" novel about a woman torn between having an affair with a married doctor or his 18-year-old son. What a dilemma! The heroine is so annoying that I kept hoping the other woman/mother would burst in and bean her with a frying pan, or whatever betrayed British houseives use on this occasions.

Also, the author doesn't use quotation marks.

-- Oh, darling, this is a terrible idea.
-- But don't you see, we cannot fight these feelings.

In my opinion, the only author who can get away with this is Roddy Doyle.

Skip this book and read something with ""s.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find myself agreeing with most of the other reviews of this book. Kate, the main character, seems so self-referential and full of ego that it's hard to like her. She moves back home to take care of her sweet old mother, Billie, in what sounds like a very unusual, old dwelling. Her antics are unamusing. Her actions only seem to be about her; she is very narcissistic in a low key way. I hate when an author doesn't put dialogue in quotes! I don't get it--it just ruins the dialogue for me.
The only time Kate shows herself to be a feeling person is after her mother's death. The other characters are somewhat interesting but undeveloped, but I didn't really care. It's not a very good read, ultimately.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t write too much about this book without getting into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say that the description here on Goodreads made it seem much more sordid than it actually is. But of course that’s what Tessa Hadley does: take sordid-seeming situations and show you how they got that way in the first place. I identified a lot with main character Kate, who moves back home to Wales to care for her aging mother. My time of taking care of elderly parents is long over, thank goodness, but I remember all too well that state of utter boredom punctuated by moments of heart-dropping dread. Hadley captures it well here.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 2 out of 5]

The whole time I was reading this I was thinking it would be so much better if Hadley had emphasized local language; as it was you really couldn't even tell it took place in the UK much less Cardiff. The quirky main character Kate is endearing and I was rooting for her, and even got a tiny kick out of the very ending, but overall I just didn't care that much for/about the story.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

flawed and introspective -- that's how I like the characters in a novel that I read sitting on the couch, too full of Thanksgiving dinner, to be. Yum.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was pretty hard to get through! The ending was disappointing and much like the rest of the book, just boring!

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tessa Hadley writes complicated, prickly people making complicated, prickly choices in lucid, precise prose. I may not always like her people but I always end up liking her books.

[Candice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the most unsatisfying Hadley book I have read. Her earlier works are really rich, observant and intelligent, but this one just sort of rambled around, the protagonist was not likable at all but still sort of fascinating. I guess you keep reading to try to figure her out. She can't make up her mind, is emotionally frozen and ends up turning away from a viable relationship to having sex with the man's teenage son, but you don't really understand what the motivation is except perhaps she needs a zipless fuck. I am a big champion of Hadley's work, but the only thing I got out of this novel was the main character was unable to figure out what she wanted and destroyed everything in the end. I normally like to come away from a novel somewhat enlightened on some level and her other books were enriching, but this one was sort of a depressing, confusing slog.

[Hannah Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compellingly gothic atmosphere for women characters struggling against convention while their men confusedly pine for them, but was let down by the main character’s frivolity that never became fully tragic before a predictable plot device tidied her up. Had moments of opportunity to become a psychological-literary thriller and would have welcomed the main character’s comparative literature studies/translations taking on more of a paratextual role, given that her persona was the result of attention to aesthetics over morals and concern for living according to ideas rather than practicalities, even while caring for her dying mother.

[Melanie Vidrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most intriguing novels I have read in a while. Tessa Hadley is a wonderful writer and these are very interesting characters

[Lisa Mettauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I’ve been thinking on what to say here about The Master Bedroom by Tessa Hadley, everything I come up with makes the book seem less than appealing. But I really liked this book.

The main character, 40-something Kate Flynn, quits her college teaching job in London to go to Cardiff, Wales, to care for her aging and close-to-senile mom, Billie. She’s kind of mean to her. Though with Billie almost all the time, Kate bosses her around and is always trying to make her leave the room. Then, after she bumps into the married brother (David) of her oldest friend (Carol), Kate fancies herself attracted to him. And, she allows an affair to develop with David’s teenaged son, Jamie. He’s not even 18. Ewww.

So, what is there to like? The setting, for one. Billie lives in a big old house called Firenze, once part of an ancestral estate bordering a lake. It’s a heavenly place, with odd-shaped rooms, stained glass windows and lots of history.

The characters, for another. I liked Kate despite her being a real mess. You can’t help but think she ran away from a pretty good life. Yet she seems almost incapable of caring for her own self, let alone her mom. But in a ethereal, not ditsy, way. And she really isn’t mean to Billie. While she talks gruff, she’s attentive to her, filling her with the sweets she loves, playing music with her, taking her to the local coffee shop. Billie is a dear. Always positive, loving and happy.

David is a bit of a mess. His second wife, Suzie, stepmom to Jamie, is having some sort of mid-life crisis, which she won’t speak of. But she’s galavanting about with her friends, who drink and smoke (yes, marijuana) and live the bohemian life. Poor David’s a bore, and completely bewildered by Suzie’s behavior, and just wants his family back. Though he finds he has feelings for Kate, which sets up a nasty triangle.

And Jamie is just finishing his A levels, unsure about what to do afterwards. When he learns Kate knew his mom (she committed suicide when he was little), he meets with Kate so he can learn more. Soon he’s smitten, and torments her until she gives in.

I found all of Hadley’s characters oddly appealing, and her slow unfolding of the story elegant and sympathetic. And I found myself a little sad when it ended.

[MountainAshleah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't engage with this novel, its characters, its plot, and its pretensions on any level. Usually I'm fine reading about shenanigans amongst the social set, in this case an academic drifting about her life, supposedly caring for her ailing mother as another touchstone in her otherwise empty life before drifting about elsewhere. But the details, whether the fussy food, the opera, the soirees, were so many and yet so empty in their use, this novel no more resonated than turning the pages of a catalogue of pretty things. How Kate falls into the affair with the "love interest" is not examined, it just happens. And it needed to be examined. That also sums up Kate in general...this character just does things. We really don't know her, and to me character study is the pleasure of reading. Otherwise it's just plot or pretty scenery or in this case, a catalog of pretty things. I opened the book to a random page and there's the episode where David asks Kate for something to read. Rather than offering him a book she's enjoyed, perhaps offering some insight into her character, she hands him a book in a different language. Why. We know she's a translator but what does this say about the character. Other than she's careless? And indeed when he brings the book back and asks her why she gave him a book in Polish...she says, "I just picked up the nearest thing." Clunk. The author could have made more of this scene but she doesn't. If I was supposed to intuit more I didn't. Just another bauble in a bauble-filled story.

Even the care of the mother with dementia is so anesthetic.

Unlike others I found the late plot twist humanizing and real. Now Kate has to learn about gritty life. But no, she just...well I won't say but there's nothing that redeems. The book just slouches to its end. The rest of the manuscript should have been thrown out and the story started here. What a dull, pretentious novel, so disappointing from someone of such talent.

[LG · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the reviews here, this book is clearly not for everyone. While Kate finds herself attracted to a son and father, there are no racy sex scenes. The attraction to a father and his son seems to be a mild taboo for some readers - or something they are not looking for in their fiction reading. I found the book to be a strong look at a woman who isn't thinking and the situations that come from not thinking. As others have noted, the quality of writing is strong. I was curious how the book would resolve. It's actually the two men that seem more interested in Kate's outcome than Kate. And so reading with a focus on their perspective can be quite satisfying. However, since Kate remains unwilling to choose or commit to something - her story is less satisfying. While not completely satisfying as a reader, I did find Kate's pushing off any kind of responsibility or commitment believable.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kate, a 40-something unattached violinist and translator leaves her artsy London life to move into her grand but decaying childhood home in a Welsh town to care for her increasingly addled mother. There, she runs into people from her girlhood and is on the brink of a passionate attachment until she makes some spectacularly bad choices that scuttle everything.

Told in Hadley's trademark lucid prose, often beautifully descriptive, that reveals her characters’ profound emotion through external things: one character, driving home in a storm after a deep shock, sees a fluttering white thing (a ghost?) in his peripheral vision cross in front of his car and screeches to a shuddering slewed stop, pulse thudding and breath ragged, sickly certain he’s struck someone, only to find a wind-tossed newspaper page under his tires. Not one word about his emotions, but nothing could be more evocative of his panic and his muddled thoughts. Masterful.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was stunned. So I guess that's good. I was completely surprised by the ending, not that Kate was pregnant, but that she cut off relationships after her mother died. My sentimental need for closure took over. I really like what Tessa Hadley does with relationships, particularly marriage relationships, but this was hard to take. I cared about Kate and Carol and Billie and Jamie and David so much. She created that empathy. And then, it seemed, she said, "Too bad dinosaurs, time to die." That's my family's phrase for why things end. I hate it, but it captures the poignant understanding that things don't last. Okay. I'll wait a while before my next Tessa Hadley book. On to Middlemarch. Oh, there's a cheery book.

[Dorian Thornley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writers observe, stare at and eavesdrop on other people, not because they find them attractive in any way but because they seem so alien and almost bizarre in their behavior. We all have similar hopes, fears, desires & particularly; motivations, but some of us just have such odd ways of navigating them. Why on earth would you say that? Wear that? Do that? Read that? Look at the crazy shit people get up to or think about when no ones watching or listening in. Hadley’s fiction feels more voyeuristic than other writers. The characters are not all that likable. You don’t root for them, but it’s fascinating like spying on a shoplifter

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kate, who has been teaching history at a university in London, returns to the mansion in Cardiff where she grew up to care for her mother, Billie, who has become "dotty." There she becomes infatuated with a married man and simultaneously becomes the object of infatuation for a young man half her age. Drawn gauzily through this novel of personal relationships are questions about class prejudice (seen from the elite POV, but not without some awareness) and whether there are supernatural moments or presences in life. Kate is rather a mess, and when she tells another character she never votes I almost gave up on her, but she manages to keep my interest, if not my sympathy, throughout.

[Jane Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tessa Hadley is such a fine writer. Her construction methods here are amazing. She somehow manages to move an unfolding story along with none of those quite mechanical transitions from one point of view to another, or one setting to another. This otherwise slow novel reads quickly and is absorbing.