Accidents in the Home

by Tessa Hadley

The debut novel of a formidable fictional talent.

An improbable coincidence brings Clare back into contact with someone she once had sex with as a teenager; to complicate matters, he is now going out with her best friend, Helly. The encounter could have just been embarrassing, but it shakes up everything in Clare's life. Clare and Helly learned to smoke and shoplift together, and even read an old copy of The Female Eunuch together, squeezed side by side on Helly's bed. Now Clare is married with three small children, bakes her own bread and buys her clothes from the charity shop. Helly is a model and has her image up on billboards ten feet high. And each of them seems to want what the other has.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, British Literature, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, European Literature

256 pages, Unknown Binding

First published April 23, 2002

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

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this, and I wasn't expecting to for several reasons. I skimmed through the top few reviews in my Friends category - as you do and although they gave 5 and 4 stars, they also noted how the plot wandered, there was no plot, inconclusive follow through on most of the characters; and yes I would agree with all those points - and secondly I've just recently read Hadley's The Past (2015). I read Robin's review -I don't know how to do the HERE thing, but I'm so glad I did. She raved about Hadley's book and it is her review that returned me to reading more of Hadley.

In the fairly distant past I had read The Master Bedroom, which I enjoyed but I felt it leaned too much on all the romantic liasions between the characters. I can't say too much about it because it's too long ago.

To return to Accidents in the Home - this is much better than the other two Hadley's I've read and surprisingly it's her debut novel, published in 2002. Whilst I was reading it I definitely felt the slowness, and the meandering nature of her character explorations. Her main character is Clare and that becomes clear as you progress; but also because some of the opening sections, detailing Clare's experiences are so unbelievably rendered into reality - those scenes where you literally forget you are reading- you look up and suddenly remember you're outside, just moving the pages up (Internet Archive copy) - and then again towards the end, there is a stunning section, which as I read it, I realised held the clue to the whole book, but I had to go back and re-read because I couldn't take in the way it hit me with its truth the first time round. It's about a young woman struggling with her decision to leave her husband, Bram and the disruptions both to her life, as well as her three children, the eldest, Coco (Jacob) is just 10.

Hadley has had the insight to not write about the great dramatic scenes of a break-up, or all the bitter comments, and/or damnation by other family members and instead focussed on the immense internal battle Clare goes through. The battle no-one sees or hears about, or can even understand. I know about it because it's so similar to what I went through in my life. I identified absolutely with Clare - and from my perspective Clare had it easy. She wasn't condemned - as she lives in the highly liberal UK, and with fairly forward thinking liberal family members, who mostly comment "Oh, Clare has left her husband." Not as I experienced!

Just to return to another point I wanted to make - the whole switches between various characters and is written from their individual perspective, so in turn we see life from Marian's perspective, Clare's mother. She is mostly concerned about her elderly, aging father, Euan - and although this section is quite lengthy and draws in various other family members it doesn't have that light and at the same time intensity of the sections where we see and feel through Clare's eyes. Other sections, are from Toby's perspective, Clare's younger half-brother; he is mostly concerned about his mother Naomi, who was previously married to Clare's father Graham. Naomi is an alcoholic, dreamy, hippy type, but who just about manages. I recognised her character in the guise of someone else in Hadley's The Past; it's fun to see similar characters and even similar settings, and scenes cropping up - writers reuse their material.

Right at the end the story line switches to Graham, in his sixties, and I literally groaned as I thought the last section was to be about this man - but it was in fact, a fabulous section, focussing on Graham's marriage to his third wife Linda. Hadley has to be admired for how she manages to get into that limbic mind of sexual attraction. Most of the book could be said to be about, the drive of sexual attraction; what on earth makes us go there? Even Marian, who sees herself as well-out of those tumultuous years, feels herself reminded as she watches the shenanigans of her younger daughter Tamsin, Clare's sister, with the school-age student Mark, the son of her dad's cleaning-lady, Elaine.

Here is that section from near the end, where I realised I was reading something - so well done, and so unusual - in exposing the internals of how are emotions, can literally drive us crazy; one moment racked by guilt and the very next following the inevitably course into the adrenalin of new love, new hope. Clare is 29 - what more need I say to those readers in their 50s and 60s or plus!

She felt-not in her heart exactly, but at the pit of her chest where lungs and heart lift above the material base of the guts- the clench of that inward gesture that must be the beginning of praying. She wished she could pray. There was a movement outward from inside her, a beseeching, like a sick-making flutter of trapped wings.
- Help me, she tried, silently. The hills from whence cometh my help. I'm making such a mess of things. Yet will I fear no evil, thy rod and staff still comfort me . . .
There was only that one giveaway creak from outside her door. If the man was ever there he went away again.

As we read, we think, oh, she is frightened about the possibility of this strange man, the person, who owns the B&B she has found in the middle of the night after a car break-down. But actually she is thinking about the awful pit of self-centredness she fears she has dragged her children, her whole life into. She no longer believes what she has done serves any decent or rational function; she is literally quaking in fear with the life-changing decisions she has made. I know, I've been there; I've done that.

But this is very good writing. Hadley really gets to the hearts or brains of how we are driven to make the decisions in our lives that we make.

I've been trying to get Clever Girl out on loan for at least a week now, from Internet Library. That is - 3 of the copies where supposed to be ONE HOUR loans - how is it that none of them are available anymore? Anyway I can only really see this as a good thing - I guess lots of readers are discovering the genius of Tessa Hadley.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this - sublime writing, of course, and wonderful attention to detail. Each character is fully whole, and while the plot meanders (is there really a plot), I really wanted to know what happened to everyone. We follow various members of an extended / step / second family, and especially, Clare who is married to Bram, fairly contentedly until she meets Bram and considers an affair, the ramifications of which affect the family in a way I hadn't expected. There is a family tree at the beginning of the book and I needed it on several occasions.

[Maya Lang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost frighteningly insightful. Hadley's ability to crack open little moments (those tiny little moments no one ever speaks of) is astonishing. Her writing is deft, her characters real. It's possible that Hadley is a nineteenth century author sent to the future to remind us how rich novels can be, not just in detail but in psychological heft. I admired her writing for being at once approachable, never trying too hard, yet still dazzling.

Something got lost over the sheer size of the cast. I wasn't always sure of the novel's center, sort of like when a camera tries to focus on too many subjects at once. I wanted more on Tamsin, more on Helly, more on that video documentary from the opening chapter. Perhaps too much falls away after getting the benefit of a detailed zoom. It's not that I wanted the novel to "come together" (Hadley is too skilled an author for a contrived ending). It's more that this was caught between forms, not quite a collection of stories and not quite a novel.

Still, Hadley's talent is enormous and undeniable. It is a crime that Kirkus didn't give this a star. It is the kind of rich, astute novel that, if written by a man, would have been met with swoons.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had not come across this author before reading a review of her latest novel so I looked for and found this one in our local library.
While the main character in the book is a housewife (Clare) with 3 children and an unfinished Ph.D thesis, it is divided up into sections each of which revolves around a member of her extended family, so that in some ways, it reads like a book of linked short stories. CLare's father has been married 3 times and produced children from each marriage so Chare has several half brothers and sisters. Each adult relationship is dysfunctional and Clare herself leaves her marriage for vague yearnings of something more exciting than the humdrum routine of children, laundry and cooking. The main themes of the novel are love, loss, and yearning for something better which causes the characters to leave situations that have become perhaps too comfortable and too predictable for excitement with someone or something else. That these new situations do not themselves last seems to be the message of the book. I was glad that the author included a family tree as keeping track of all the characters was sometimes difficult, but the book held my attention throughout and I will look for more of this author's work.

[Stacy culler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too slow and subtle for my tastes

I get the point that Hadley was trying to make...that marriage is complicated, that underlying frustrations and quiet selves exist in the relationship that spouses are u aware of In each other, and that the lives of children are forever shaped by the course of their parents marriage. But really, these ideas are not any kind of epiphany, and I was annoyed by the fact that the characters in this book never seem to respond in any way to the events that occur. This book was all observations, all dawning awareness, and no corresponding reaction.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book scared me. It scared me with the ease that the central character, bored suburban 29-year-old mother of three Clare, walked away from her life to try to recapture - in shameful, sad failure - what she once had, or the life she thought she might have.

It scared me with Hadley's ability to nail that nasty, shaming, nagging sense of dissatisfaction that creeps up on you, that feeling that you deserve - if not better, then different.

Clare thought while she was reading this novel that perhaps in her life she was wrong, she was perverted, she was, in her foolishness and vanity, sacrificing something precious. What if she was leaving a good man and breaking up a family, not even for love, but out of curiosity, out of dissatisfaction? What if she was doing this not, as she had believed, out of deep inner need, but in fact she was following a pattern, a seductive and flattering and false suggestion that flowed at her on all sides from novels and films and advertising, about the importance, the paramount and endless intricate intriguing importance, of her own fulfilment?

Hadley's book shimmies on the edge of chick-lit - unsatisfied woman with crazy family leaves nice husband for naughty man, learns lesson, returns chastised but ready to be happy. Only there's nothing as tidy as that. There's one scene in particular - where Clare's younger sister and younger half-brother pick up their childhood games in a sinister, scary way - that exists for no narrative reason but utterly makes sense.

Then there's Hadley's writing - never showy, but detailed, precise, apt. Here's Clare daydreaming about reuniting with her husband.

The vision was highly ridiculous. Not only had she never in reality dreamed of asking Bram to forgive her, it had never occurred to her that there was anything she needed to be forgiven for. Everything the break-up had actually been like - the impossible, convoluted ferreting out of blame and causations, the twisting round of their old knowledge of each other to use in new hostilities, the sheer meanness of their unleashed dislike of one another - all that was cleared aside in this vision as if it was finished with, when of course it wasn't.

'the sheer meanness of their unleashed dislike' - that doubling of the word 'meanness'; the book is full of sharply memorable sentences like this.


Sometimes I think I gravitate towards YA because recognising your teenage emotions is safer and more enjoyable than running into your adult ones. But I guess sometimes we all have to grow up.

[Candice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hadley manages to take the predictable and make it unpredictable. In her work so far, she deals primarily with relationship/domestic themes, the small things that happen in people's lives. But the self-analysis that goes with it is what makes it interesting. She has excellent internal and external observations, once in a while reminds me a little of Doris Lessing. A line that made me laugh out loud: "Mrs. Tierney, with black dyed hair and a worn face and lipstick applied approximately to her mouth..." Another quote that rang true: "It was a time of much misinformation for women, Marian though now. Because of all that pounding writing music that purported to be the produce of anguished sexual desire - 'Foxy Lady,' 'Baby Let me Light Your Fire,' 'She belongs to me,' - it was easy to make the mistake of thinking yourself empowered as the object of that desire. Easy not to notice that the object was more or less interchangeable, and that it was to other men and not to women that those beautiful young geniuses looked for critical approval when the music was over. Sometimes being the object of that desire was no more empowering than suttee. After Jimi Hendrix died, young girls he'd never known went to his flat and tried to jump out the window." And in response to reading Tolstoy's Resurrection, she wonders: "...perhaps in her life she was wrong, she was perverted, she was in her foolishness and vanity sacrificing something precious. What if she was leaving a good man and breaking up a family, not even for love, but just for curiosity, out of dissatisfaction? What if she was doing this not, as she had believed, out of deep inner need but the fact that she was following a pattern, a seductive and flattering and false suggestion that flowed at her on all sides from novels and films and advertising, about the importance, the paramount and endless intricate intriguing importance, of her own fulfillment?"

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful - though not always fascinating look at the dissatisfactions and inner turmoil of ordinary lives. Plain and to the point in the best tradition of Anita Brookner. Happiness seems an elusive thread which makes this a sombre though perhaps more realistic read than it would be otherwise.

[Sherry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book. Perhaps I expected a better story with characters who grew. The jumping around from character to character annoyed me and I skipped through the last third of the novel. On a positive note, this was her first novel and her later stories are lovely. So there you have it.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow the first book you read by an author colours everything by them you read afterwards. That's more or less the way I regard this book. It became the yardstick for everything else. Hadley has published shorter, longer and perhaps in some ways more aesthetically satisfying novels since, as well as a series of finely tuned tales in The New Yorker. But this was my first taste of...the magic.

(Incidentally, I would say this even if Hadley hadn't once been my teacher, and this book came out not long before my interview and meeting with her.)

[Tracy Guth Spangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I adore her short stories and haven’t loved her novels as much, but this one I did. She reminds me of Alice Munro and A.S. Byatt.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Hadley's first novel. Maybe it has its flaws (too many characters) but it really showcases her talent for exploring family relationships and her characters are so believable. She also evokes their environment so well, creating vivid mental images. You know how Sally Rooney spells out endless tedious, banal details that contribute nothing (a character making a cup of tea for example)? Well, Hadley's details genuinely illuminate and make her characters real. "[Elaine] had a characteristic, settling, complacent gesture where she drew her head back into a double chin while she tapped the ash off her cigarette; she ran the butt under the tap when she had finished and buried it in the bin." She's so observant -- yes, she uses a lot of adjectives, but they are well chosen and don't seem unnecessary.

This book reminded me of Alice Munro's The Beggar Maid in that each chapter is self-contained, like a short story, but they still form a coherent whole. Also like Munro, Hadley writes above all about women's states of mind, their frustrations and dissatisfaction, always feeling the grass is greener somewhere else. The adults in this book all love and care for their children, but they are hopeless at grown-up relationships. There is actually a funny moment when Clare's attempt to commit adultery goes badly wrong and in fact is turned back on her -- this chapter was so well done.

There isn't really a plot as such, and the ending tails off in a slightly disappointing way. There were characters I really wanted to know more about (Tamsin and Mark, for example). So if you don't like plotless books this might not be for you. I just loved getting absorbed in the minutiae of these people's messy lives.

[Audrey Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

**Accidents during lockdown

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst I appreciated the artifice and craft of much of the prose, overall I have to say I was left a little underwhelmed by this. I cannot gladly award a book which felt such a drag any more than three stars.

I acknowledge this is a matter of taste. This probably appealed to some (probably female) readers more than it appealed to me - the domestic nature of it, the layering and intertwining of people and family and generally mundane events left me feeling like I'd waded through a dense undergrowth of biographical information towards a dramatic destination which never was reached. Though able to appreciate how well-described the characters (almost all of whom were women) came across, human and flawed people as they were, to me it felt like a series of set-pieces which had been glued together by virtue of a family tree in the opening pages and an arbitrary sense of an overall theme along the lines of folk being dissatisfied with what they have and have had.

[LG · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Tessa Hadley book. She has a strong ability to capture the small moments in family life. Things like peeling potatoes while reviewing the details of purchasing lingerie in preparation for a tryst. Or throwing the pasta maker at your husband's new girlfriend. These small acts tell us about the dysfunction in the large blended Menges family. Graham marries three times and has children with each wife. Clare, Graham's first daughter, is a bored housewife, with an unfinished PhD in literature.

Female archetypes from the western canon are often near in Hadley's characters' thoughts. I think of them as almost ghosts. Present, but not fully interacting with the characters. Clare briefly considers Madame Bovary on her way to London with the plan of having sex with her best friend's boyfriend. Like Madame Bovary, Clare is smart and hasn't completely developed her intellectual self. Is boredom and self-absorption the true driver for pursuing romance? Can a new man easily replace the previous pursuit? While previous female protagonists are considered, Clare is not constrained by past social norms represented by the Western canon. She pursues her affair wanting to be in touch with something wild and vital inside her.

The accuracy in which Hadley captures the longing to pursue something for selfish reasons is done with incredible preciseness. It's not flattering. And while Hadley's prose are very strong, I struggle with the less than appealing essence of her character. Despite this discomfort, I will definitely read more from her.

[Cristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was a lot going on in this book, and in general it was good, but I had a difficult time feeling any sort of empathy for the characters. Not saying they were unlikable, but I did not form any feeling of attachment to them.

[Electra · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a genius ! Tessa Hadley writes so beautifully and she expresses women's inner voices like no one else. This is a book who needs attention but it's so rewarding. It's what I'd call "an adult read" and I'm so glad to have bought two other books (I've read her short stories, so good!)

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is just a bad novel.

[Vy Nguyen]

I didnt like this at all, couldnt connect with any of the characters, all very annoying had to force my way through this.

[Lori]

her writing style is beautiful but you end up hating all the characters, not one likeable thing about any of them

[Emer Tannam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the writing. It was clever, incisive, and often funny. My own criticism is that perhaps there was too much focus on too many characters for the 300 odd pages. But I really enjoyed it, and delighted that this author has written loads more books.

[Helen Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fan of Tessa Hadley, I was delighted to find her debut novel in a second hank bookshop. It's a wonderful book and stunning debut. It's sharp, richly observed real characters. I lived the way each chapter felt like a short story... Brilliant! On now to read her entire back catalogue.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Insightful observations of domestic lives. I would have liked more Tamsin and less Graham and Euan, although I think at the end Graham's predicament is appropriately comical.

[Amy Gentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This cannot be a first novel. No fair. No fair!!!

[Charlotte Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m only just discovering Tessa Hadley and after enjoying a collection of her short stories I wanted to try one of her novels. I think you can certainly tell her background is in short stories, as each chapter is quite self contained. It makes for a pleasurable reading experience and I liked the episodic nature of the book, which skipped over what might ordinarily be important plot points. I also liked the sprawling central family and how we flitted between different members of the family. She leaves you wanting more, but that’s not a bad thing.

[Sara Strand · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble and it was good. A little different ending than I thought- but good nonetheless. It's about Clare, a 29 year old mom of 3 who is basically considered a stay at home mom. She's married and has, essentially, the perfect life. When her best friend visits with her new lover (whom Clare knows from years before) she suddenly realizes she wants more out of life. She is overwhelmed with her current life and is kind of jealous of the care free life her friend has. Never mind that all of Clare's family sees life differently and in their own rights are having some kind of crisis in their own lives. So in order to test the waters Clare sets in motion the acts that eventually end the book. Nobodies lives are ever the same and the ending is kind of unsatisfying to me as a reader, but I suppose if it were real life it's exactly how this part of the story would end. Honestly I could relate to Clare because I know the feelings she was feeling in the book. And I understood her rationale. There was a passage that summed it all up perfectly: She couldn't think how to complain of him. She out to have a complaint, oughtn't she, for an alibi? He was uncommunicative sometimes. And he didn't like many people, much; he was always friendly and polite, but in private he was unforgiving if he found out anyone's vanity or pretension. He knew things but he didn't invent things. Those didn't sound like accusations; they sounded like goodness. And that's it- it makes it seem as if you're just good enough... maybe it isn't enough? If you're married, if you're married with kids, or if you are with a long term partner and kind of feel like you're in a weird rut- it's an interesting book.

[Chris Spiegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing is exquisite and elicits private musings and memories, as well as raw self-reflection. Hadley writes as one who truly understands the human experience and unwraps the most seemingly mundane moments as proof of her profound understanding of what it means to be alive. I have read most of Hadley’s work and note that this, her first novel, differs in that it spoke to me in a way that her other books did not. Uncomfortable to read, and somewhat difficult to comprehend at times, this book forced me to stop and re-absorb sections, not only because of the confusing cast of characters, but because each paragraph holds much more than initially appears. This is a book that I know I will read again at some point for what it will offer with fresh perspective and lived experience.

“These days she saw things in a different time scale. She knew that for the crone to change places with the lovely lady took almost no time at all, although you never saw it: it happened while you looked the other way.”

[Sonja Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read and loved short stories by Tessa Hadley in the New Yorker, but I haven't been so crazy about her novel. It contains some of the same wonderful observations of one's inner life that Hadley has done before. The plot involved many different characters in an extended family, and I couldn't keep them straight. Apparently others couldn't either since she included a genealogy at the front of the book. While I thought that the focus on the individual dissatisfactions of the characters was interesting, sometimes it got a little too dysfunctional. I liked that the book didn't finish with a tidy ending, just more of the yearning and inner emptiness that weaves through it all.

[Mary-alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to keep tabs on the various members of this extended family of ex-wives and children of one man. The patriarch is a well-know artist who has 2 ex wives and a current wife with children from all. The children form their own extended family with the support of the ex-wives. The narrator is one of the daughters, whose own life is in shambles due to a fling which did not seem justified and which also leads complications with her best friend. Several of her other siblings flit in and out of the novel with no real purpose. I could down grade this to a 2 star.

[Regina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wickedly funny novel from one of my favorite writers.
Clare has everything sewn up in a perfect life of domestic bliss, but a visit from a childhood friend, now a successful model, and her glamorous boyfriend, wakes unacknowledged jealousy and rage. When she realizes there is a chink in the wall between her wife and mum life and her friend's, she throws herself at it with a sledgehammer and grabs what she can. Of course, not everything is as she imagined, and her old life intrudes. But no regrets, at least not yet.