Sunday Times bestseller Tessa Hadley explores the big consequences of small events in this new collection

'You've either got it or you haven't. Hadley's got it'
FINANCIAL TIMES

Heloise's father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her forties, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy. Janey's bohemian mother plans to marry a man close to Janey's own age - everything changes when an accident interrupts the wedding party. A daughter caring for her elderly mother during the pandemic becomes obsessed with the woman next door; in the wake of his best friend's death, a man must reassess his affair with the friend's wife. Teenager Cecilia wakes one morning on vacation with her parents in Florence and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes.

These stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality, and dreams.

"Consistently pulls you in from the first sentence... The capacity to make readers care from the off about what happens to these imaginary people next is an unquantifiable, indefinable talent that cannot be taught. You've got it or you haven't. Hadley's got it" - Financial Times

"One of our finest novelists and a short story supremo... It is hard to imagine stories more skilfully paced and polished than these" - Observer

"Beautifully done... The strongest stories resonate, offering glimpses of the hidden selves we all conceal" - Sunday Times