The Past

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Claire Lowdon (2 May 2013), "Reviewed: Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley", New Statesman , retrieved 7 March 2016 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. Hadley segue tutti i personaggi, e forse i personaggi sono troppi. O forse io avrei preferito che si concentrasse su quelli per me principali, i quattro fratelli (tre sorelle e un fratello), che devono decidere cosa fare della vecchia casa di campagna che appartiene alla famiglia da generazioni: invece Hadley dedica molto spazio ai due bambini e ai due adolescenti, quattro personaggi di nessun interesse e nessuno spessore, tutti e quattro piuttosto capricciosi, bizzosi, viziati, irritanti. I liked it. It got me to look again at my own family and the ways in which our shared life unites us while our different personalities create friction. I realized that every family has a sort of myth about itself which is just that; a myth, not the truth. Hadley μου φάνηκε εθιστική και το βιβλίο αποτελεί για μένα ένα τρανό παράδειγμα αυτών των βιβλίων που χωρίς να έχουν ένα πολύ τρανταχτό στόρι, ωστόσο κρατούν αμείωτο το ενδιαφέρον του αναγνώστη ως την τελευταια σελίδα.

Three sisters and a brother, complete with children, a new wife, and an ex-boyfriend’s son, descend on their grandparents' dilapidated old home in the Somerset countryside for a final summer holiday. It's a gorgeous book - subtly rendered, full of fine observations about human relationships and interactions. Hadley's characters are incredibly real, and though there's a certain density in her elegant writing that made me slow down a little, I didn't mind a bit. I didn't mind because I loved being with this group of people. I cared.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." - Library Journal Otherwise the very well-written story, perhaps a little character-driven and only hot on stream of consciousness movement, did manage to tell the story of a ordinary British family struggling with life's challenges and the memories of the life they used to enjoy and love. It was like being nostalgic again about a landscape in which they could not embed themselves again as participants in it. They were out of it for too many years. The three sisters were like a seraglio of Fate. So the same, yet so different, with a bond that eventually would prove to be stronger than destiny. Their last reunion in the old home, being a typical British pastoral as pastiche, brought more than just a last effort to be a united family, drenched in old traditions and values.

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 Starred Review. Hadley is the patron saint of ordinary lives; her trademark empathy and sharp insight are out in force here." - Kirkus Sono un topos cinematografico più ancora che letterario. E sono un incidente di percorso nella vita di molti di noi: seducenti, allettanti, invitanti – finché le si aspetta, le si guarda da lontano – insopportabili, facilmente dolorose, quando non rabbiose, appena sono in atto.

Ma forse è che la grande lezione carveriana qui rimane disattesa: viva l’ordinario, questo sì, ma se lo si sa trasformare in straordinario.

We've all been there: the family reunion that's looked forward to but also dreaded. In Tessa Hadley's latest novel, THE PAST, she reunites four siblings at the ancestral home of their grandparents in the English countryside. The plan is to spend three relaxing weeks together while ultimately deciding what to do with the house which is badly in need of repairs. Stevie Davies (16 January 2004), "Everything Will Be All Right by Tessa Hadley", The Independent , retrieved 7 March 2016the under-earth smell of imprisoned air, something plaintive in the thin light of the hall with its grey and white tiled floor…There was always a moment of adjustment as the shabby, needy actuality of the place settled over their too-hopeful idea of it.” Not much happens in this book except that each character transforms in a matter of weeks and discovers aspects of themselves that do not present themselves in their lives away from each other. 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 Elaine Showalter (1 May 2013), "Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley – review", The Guardian , retrieved 8 March 2016 Helen Brown (14 January 2011), "The London Train by Tessa Hadley: review", The Daily Telegraph , retrieved 7 March 2016

Though the Crane family have grown up and lead lives of their own, they are forever linked by the shared experiences of their childhood. This holiday is an attempt to recapture the some of their happiest memories and a chance to take a break from their current troubles: "Alice had told her therapist that she dreamed about this house all the time. Every other house she'd lived in seemed, beside this one, only a stage set for a performance." Siblings Harriet, Roland, Alice, and Fran are to spend three weeks vacationing at the family home in Kington while they decide what to do with the place. After years of holding onto the abode and all the memories it holds, they finally have to face the fact that the upkeep is just too much. Sameer Rahim (6 October 2015), "The Past by Tessa Hadley, review: 'keenly intelligent' ", The Daily Telegraph , retrieved 7 March 2016 They had set out to have children as lightly as if they were playing house, and now her…domestic life bored him…The imbalance was fated, built into their biology.” “Tom had said once that anyone could do motherhood: in fact, he added, the less complicated you were, the better mother you would make. This was probably true, but not consoling.”We learn about each of these middle age siblings - their jobs, personality, their quirks- their inner voice and the voice they manifest. The contrast is obvious and interesting. 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 The effect of suddenly switching into the consciousness of these individuals when they were young children (just a baby in the case of Alice); with their mother, alive here, young and strong, is moving. Where we might have been impatient with dreamy Alice (well-named) for instance, now we see through her mother’s eyes her first clambering steps to independence when she escapes her cot and arrives on the threshold of her mother’s room: ‘in her sagging night-nappy…staring solemnly, as if she wasn’t sure what she might find, in a world no one had prepared for her.’ Heartrending when we know already what Alice finds later in life. And bitter, mixed-up Harriet, now before us, a small girl who, her Grandmother realises, is not the adored child, expected only to be ‘sensible’. And Roland, being a 1960s boy, is the one singled out for future intellectual endeavours, later discovered desperately trying to read Herodotus ‘in the original’, opened ‘across his scabby knees’.