Married Love: 'One of the most subtle and sublime contemporary writers' Vogue eBook : Hadley, Tessa: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

A good book to read when travelling as the short stories are interesting and mostly not too long

Really enjoyed my first experience of Tessa Hadley. The short stories are thoughtful and entertaining. One is just long enough for a bedtime read.

I found this book very frustrating. There is no doubt that the author writes well and intelligently and can set a scene and introduce characters. But for my money I need a point to a short story. To my mind these stories have no point. I suppose, to be fair, this sort of short story can be compared to an impressionist daub. But when I get to the end of it I say to myself "so what?". The art of short story writing, at any rate short story writing that pleases me, is to make a point. These stories just tale off into nothing and there seems no rhyme or reason why they should end when they do.Nevertheless I'm going to try one of her novels, because there, surely, she has to have a plot.

In my opinion, this collection is all about what happens when the lives of people from different orbits collide unexpectedly, and what takes place as a result. Those different orbits could be due to factors such as class, personality, age, or society's constructs of who a person 'is' or 'should be'. The characters find themselves undergoing a gentle revelation as a result of this collision. They find new inner strength, or a sexuality they'd normally bury, or a new tolerance for someone they previously couldn't stand, or a more jaded view of life, or their prejudice turned on its head.The endings of these stories aren't neatly tied up. They don't clobber you over the head. They're as subtle and open-ended as real life, and they left me thinking over what I'd just read, and about the changed perceptions - my own and the character's.I found the plots cleverly unpredictable and the descriptive writing excellently subtle. I love lyrical, understated films and books, so I enjoyed this very much.

There are other fine short story writers working today, but for my money, Tessa Hadley is the finest. No tricks, no reader manipulation, no easy answers, just honesty and a vivid, clear style that ropes you in from the first and holds you to the end.