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Nov 21, 2024 | 
dailymail.co.uk | Tessa Hadley
I’m just finishing War And Peace, in the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky. I took it with me when I was travelling by train and ferry to Ireland, because I knew it wouldn’t fail me; I never take an unknown book on a journey, in case it lets me down. I decided not to care that it was a very heavy hardback. What an inexhaustible wonder novel this is: thrilling and heart-nourishing and heart-wringing and truthful. I hate reading about war but in this book I can bear it, I’m even hungry for it.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
literaryreview.co.uk | Tessa Hadley
The slightly bland, slightly intriguing title of Tessa Hadley’s new novella suits her unassuming but compelling style. The first section of The Party opens with what would seem to be the main event, but the following two sections also have social occasions at their centre, rippling out from the original one. Twenty-something Evelyn and her sister Moira attend a function arranged by their friend Vincent in a grotty pub in the Bristol docks.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
anothermag.com | Sally Rooney |Alan Hollinghurst |Rachel Kushner |Tessa Hadley
From Murakami’s first novel in six years to a joint biography of writers/frenemies Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, here are ten new books to tuck into this autumn The end of summer is always pretty cruel, even if you’re a committed knitwear lover. There’s nowhere to escape, which is presumably why publishers roll out such bounty at this time of year.
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Jul 7, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Max Porter |Mohsin Hamid |Tessa Hadley
Tessa Hadley Decency, integrity and competence – those plain things – are what we needWhat a pleasure it was to put my X in a box for Labour on Thursday, in a church hall round the corner from where I live in Cardiff. I love the ordinary shabbiness of the polling stations, the desultory chat of the volunteers, the old-fashioned solidities of paper and stubby pencil on a string, the slow stream of people taking time out of their day to do their civic duty.
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Jun 23, 2024 | 
newyorker.com | Tessa Hadley
The party was in full swing. Evelyn could hear the sexy blare of the trad jazz almost as soon as she got off the bus at St. Mary Redcliffe and began walking over to the Steam Packet, the pub that Vincent—who was a friend of Evelyn’s older sister, Moira—had commandeered for the evening. He’d decided that they all needed a party to cheer them up, because the winter had been so bitter, and because now, in February, the incessant rain had turned the snow to slush.
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May 24, 2024 | 
stingingfly.org | Tessa Hadley
I am reading Alice Munro all the time, really: whole stories, or whole collections, or just bits of stories, for the pure pleasure of the fragment. It’s not extraordinary, then, that I was sharing some of her writing – the title story of her 2001 collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – in a seminar with students just a couple of days before the news came of her death, with all the accompanying sadness of the loss of her.
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Aug 31, 2023 | 
wsj.com | Tessa Hadley
What to Read NextIn an exclusive excerpt from his new biography ‘Elon Musk,’ Walter Isaacson offers a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most surprising and controversial decisions of the mogul’s career. Five writers ask whether society has lost its way when it comes to the most intimate of human acts. From “Barbie” to literary fiction about women in STEM, today’s popular feminist stories are nostalgic for a time when the obstacles facing women were easier to define.
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Aug 30, 2023 | 
lrb.co.uk | Emily Coleman |Tessa Hadley
I’ve found out something disturbing about Emily Holmes Coleman, which is that she wrote – and in biro – in other people’s books. She turned up once at the house of a friend, the novelist Mary Wesley, travelling with just two carrier bags of her things. Wesley mentioned that she had been reading Simone Weil, and the next morning found Coleman ‘sitting in bed wearing a fisherman’s jersey busily defacing Miss Weil’s Letter to a Priest’. It’s nice of her to make it sound as if that’s funny.
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Aug 2, 2023 | 
highbrowmagazine.com | Tessa Hadley |Lee Polevoi
After the Funeral and Other StoriesBy Tessa HadleyKnopf240 pagesIn her new collection, After the Funeral and Other Stories, Tessa Hadley excels at describing small details, the way light falls in a room, the substance and texture of family life. This blends wonderfully with the characters she creates—smart women, sometimes attractive, sometimes indifferent about their beauty—and their busy inner lives. Her stories, if read too quickly, can seem to move in slow-motion.
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Jul 27, 2023 | 
washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Tessa Hadley
The 12 stories in After the Funeral, Tessa Hadley’s fourth collection, are tonics for our news-laden, overstimulated times. Like a favorite cat sitting on you, these short tales are at once intelligent and twisty, cozy and intimate. Even while you’re with them, you’re already wishing for them not to leave.
