November 23, 2015
Not much happens in this sixth novel from Hadley (Clever Girl), 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 as they putter about their deceased grandparents’ home for three weeks, deciding whether or not to sell it. Split into three acts—two bookends that take place in the present, and one middle section that flashes back to their dead mother’s brief return to the
cottage during a tumultuous time in her marriage—the book has the feeling of a disjointed structure. But like her previous works, it’s Hadley’s ability to probe the quirks of her characters’ psyches that makes this novel exceptional. Whether it’s the vain second-youngest sibling, Alice, and her habit of overcompensating for her brother’s and sisters’ inadequacies, or the introverted oldest sibling Hettie, and her secret obsession with her stuffy brother, Roland, and his sophisticated Argentinian wife (his third), Hadley has a knack for exposing each character’s most pressing vulnerabilities. Of special note are the scenes involving the teenagers at the house—Roland’s 16-year-old daughter, Molly, and Alice’s ex-boyfriend’s college-age son, Kasim. The lovebirds’ blooming infatuation with each other is palpable and awkward; it recalls the epic nature of falling helplessly,
giddily in love for the first time. This is familial drama at its best—unabashedly ordinary yet undoubtedly captivating.

August 1, 2015

This new work by Hadley, whose novel The London Train and story collections Sunstroke and Married Love were all New York Times Notable Books, proclaimed her breakout at this year's Day of Dialog by Harper VP and executive editor Jennifer Barth. Hurts and secrets spill forth as three sisters, a brother, and their children gather at their country house for a final visit before it is sold.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 29, 2016
Narrator of well over one hundred audio books, Lennon brings a veteran’s confidence to this quiet domestic drama in her marvelous evocation of Hadley’s language. Lennon prizes the novel’s slow description and careful characterizations of several generations of a British family. However, she falls flat in creating recognizable voices for those characters, all middle-aged siblings who return to the family’s country house for a summer holiday only to find that the wounds that once defined them are still festering under the surface. In particular, Lennon fails to distinguish the three sisters’ voices, despite the sharp differences in their personalities: the pragmatic Fran, the dreamy and self-absorbed Alice, and the chronically apprehensive Hetty. As well, when the novel reverts to an extended flashback to 1968, two other female characters share the same brisk intonations of Lennon’s usual voice. Though it’s a pleasant and highly intelligent voice, the performance misses the subtlety of Hadley’s cast of characters. A Harper hardcover.

October 1, 2015

With their quaint furniture, vintage linens, seashell collections, and sepia photographs, old country cottages have a definite mystique. So it is with the Crane family cottage, where the now-grown children were raised by their grandparents after their mother died and their father abandoned them and where they regularly return for summer vacations. Accompanied by various partners and offspring are Harriet, the introspective loner; free-spirited Alice; Fran, the wife of a musician; and Roland, the successful academic, who arrives with his stunning new Argentinian wife. While the adults gossip and argue over whether to spend money on the house in need of repair or to sell up and recoup their losses, the children are left to wander the woods and create mischief in a derelict house they find in the forest. The past intrudes upon the present in the revealing middle of the book, an episode in which their dreamy, impractical mother returned home, seeking an escape from her unhappy marriage. VERDICT 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. [See Prepub Alert, 7/13/15.]--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

"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

"From the coziest and most familiar of fictional materials, Hadley has created a remarkable story as disturbing as it is diverting." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"Hadley is so insightful, such a lovely writer, that she pulls you right into the tangle of wires that connect and trip up the stressed siblings. She makes you feel for these imperfect people, want to scold them, and ultimately accept them as they are. Just like family." — People, Book of the Week

"A novel so evocative of summer and adolescence that to read it is to reexperience the deep languor and longing of those days.... We come to understand that the past... is merely yesterday's present.... It is that revelation that elevates the novel, deepening our own understanding of what shapes us." — Tayari Jones, O Magazine

"Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts." — Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

"Deliciously precise.... Built in a Chekhovian manner, handily assembling the grown members of an extended family and their offspring under one roof.... Hadley is adept at delineating the Cranes' brand of cultured middle-class Britishness in all its generational mutations." — Fernanda Eberstadt, New York Times Book Review

"Few writers have been as important to me as Tessa Hadley. She puts on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own. She is a true master, and The Past is a big, brilliant novel: sensual, wise, compelling—and utterly magnificent." — Lily King, author of Euphoria

"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." — Joan Frank, San Francisco Chronicle

"Universal in its appeal and its intuitive ways of revealing how human nature, even our own, can surprise us.... Readers...should prepare themselves...for the beautiful cadences of Hadley's descriptive, lyrical prose." — Connie Ogle, Miami Herald

"Hadley is so perceptive... that it can feel like she's revealing little secrets about life that it would have taken you years to notice on your own. A-" — Isabella Biedenharn, Entertainment Weekly

"Splendid.... Hadley's gift for depicting the interior lives of children and adults rivals Ian McEwans's in the aptly lauded first section of Atonement." — Amy Gentry, Chicago Tribune

"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." — Megan O'Grady, Vogue

"I find Tessa Hadley's work genuinely helpful, especially when it comes to the big subjects: love and marriage, the...