The Past (Hadley) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Hadley is adept at delineating the Cranes' brand of cultured middle-class Britishness in all its generational mutations.... The Past offers a contemporary variant on the pastoral idyll. Hadley's evocation of Kington's Arthur Rackham-like tangle of mossy woods and slippery brooks is deliciously precise, as is her charting of the cultural implications of the area's recent upgrade from poor farmland to gentrified vacation spot…But even as we come to understand why Kington has such a deep psychological pull over the Crane children, we are shown how Britain's enduring class divisions ensure that they remain outsiders in this place.... Hadley's many fans will welcome this solid addition to her continuing narrative of how brainy women and blundering men negotiate the slippery class and sex wars of modern-day Britain.
Fernanda Eberstadt - New York Times Book Review


Hadley should be a bestseller rather than literary fiction’s best kept secret…. [She] is an exquisite writer, a writer’s writer, with a fine eye for detail and a way of crafting sentences that stop and make you inhale.
London Times


Exquisite…. For anyone who cherishes Anne Tyler and Alice Munro, the book offers similar deep pleasures. Like those North American masters of the domestic realm, Hadley crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural.... Extraordinary.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


I finished The Past sadly—why did it have to end?—with a sense that I had understood something profound about both Hadley’s characters, and my own life. Many readers will, I suspect, in the presence of this exhilarating novel feel the same.
Boston Globe


Hadley glides like a familiar spirit through the rooms of the house and the perspectives of her characters…. Her novels have a moral spaciousness that gives their ordinary settings and conflicts a philosophical range.... The Past shows Ms. Hadley’s gifts in fine fettle.
Wall Street Journal


Hadley’s formidable storytelling talent and compassionate understanding of humanity pull us right into this beautifully told narrative…. A memorable novel that continues to resonate well after the reader has turned the last page, and makes us long for the next work of fiction by this outstanding English writer.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


Each player... is so distinct, so warmly dimensional you soon feel you know them as well as they know each other. This alone... is a marvel. More marvelous still is Hadley’s seamless, steady control, moving individual and collective stories forward and backward in time — a splendid work.
San Francisco Chronicle


[An] expertly wrought depiction of family life. Hadley’s arresting descriptions of the physical and emotional landscape, and her tender approach to love, lust and, crucially, the passing of time underline her reputation as one of the UK’s finest contemporary novelists.
Financial Times (UK)


Masterly….When it comes to domestic drama Hadley is without rival, and here her considerable talent is poured into an astonishingly astute grasp of ‘the sheer irritation and perplexity of family coexistence,
Independent (UK)


A new Tessa Hadley novel is a pleasure to be savoured. In her five novels and two collections of stories, Hadley has matched the psychological insight of Henry James with the sharp dialogue of Elizabeth Bowen.... A hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.
Daily Telegraph (UK)


Tessa Hadley has become one of this country’s great contemporary novelists. She is equipped with an armoury of techniques and skills that may yet secure her a position as the greatest of them.
Guardian (UK)


Hadley’s beautifully composed new novel... recalls Elizabeth Bowen’s The House in Paris in its dovetailing story lines, but the author’s genius for the thorny comforts of family... are entirely her own.
Vogue


Not much happens in this sixth novel from Hadley, yet even its most quotidian events seem bathed in meaning and consequence. Set exclusively on the rambling grounds of a crumbling English cottage estate, the story follows four middle-aged siblings.... This is familial drama at its best—unabashedly ordinary yet undoubtedly captivating
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A fresh take on a familiar story of fractious family reunions where old resentments resurface, new alliances form, and long-buried secrets are uncovered. A great read whether at the cottage or just dreaming of one. —Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal


Placing fraught family relationships under the microscope, Hadley, wise and discerning, offers a subtle-yet-bold examination of complex emotional subtexts that have the power to bring kin together or destroy the bonds that would otherwise unite them.
Booklist


(Starred review.) [A] quietly masterful domestic portrait.... Broken up into three dreamy sections—two in the present and one set in the same house a generation earlier—the novel might seem overly precious if it weren't so bracingly precise. Hadley is the patron saint of ordinary lives; her trademark empathy and sharp insight are out in force here.
Kirkus Reviews