Purchase
Free Love, February 2022
Hardcover / e-Book
The Past, January 2016
Hardcover / e-Book
Harper
January 2016
On Sale: January 5, 2016
320 pages ISBN: 0062270419 EAN: 9780062270412 Kindle: B00WQZSCPM Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Fiction
In her most accessible, commercial novel yet, the “supremely
perceptive writer of formidable skill and intelligence
(New York Times Book Review) turns her astute eye
to a dramatic family reunion, where simmering tensions and
secrets come to a head over three long, hot summer
weeks. With five novels and two collections of
stories, Tessa Hadley has earned a reputation as a fiction
writer of remarkable gifts. She brings all of her
considerable skill and an irresistible setup to The
Past, a novel in which three sisters, a brother, and
their children assemble at their country house. These
three weeks may be their last time there; the upkeep is
prohibitive, and they may be forced to sell this beloved
house filled with memories of their shared past (their
mother took them there to live when she left their father).
Yet beneath the idyllic pastoral surface, hidden passions,
devastating secrets, and dangerous hostilities threaten to
consume them. Sophisticated and sleek, Roland’s new
wife (his third) arouses his sisters’ jealousies and
insecurities. Kasim, the twenty-year-old son of Alice’s
ex-boyfriend, becomes enchanted with Molly, Roland’s
sixteen-year-old daughter. Fran’s young children make an
unsettling discovery in a dilapidated cottage in the woods
that shatters their innocence. Passion erupts where it’s
least expected, leveling the quiet self-possession of
Harriet, the eldest sister. Over the course of this
summer holiday, the family’s stories and silences
intertwine, small disturbances build into familial crises,
and a way of life—bourgeois, literate, ritualized,
Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end. With subtle
precision and deep compassion, Tessa Hadley brilliantly
evokes a brewing storm of lust and envy, the indelible
connections of memory and affection, the fierce, nostalgic
beauty of the natural world, and the shifting currents of
history running beneath the surface of these seemingly
steady lives. The result is a novel of breathtaking skill
and scope that showcases this major writer’s extraordinary
talents.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|