Reviews

Over the past couple of years the name Tessa Hadley has come up on my favourite book blogs several times and on Backlisted podcast but it was listening to her talking to Daisy Buchanan on You’re Booked earlier this year that persuaded me to buy her most recent novel, Free Love.

The first chapter is a wonderful set piece which introduces the reader to the central family, includes some amazingly awkward interactions between characters and shows you their inner thoughts in a gently amusing way, reminding me very much of Barbaara Pym and Elizabeth Taylor.

The story revolves around Phyllis, a ‘60s housewife living in a sleepy London suburb with her husband Roger and children Collette and Hugh. She’s not happy where her life seems to have landed her and seizes an opportunity to throw caution to the wind. The narrative is told mostly from her perspective but we also see the inner thoughts of the other main characters, a tricky thing to pull off that’s done brilliantly. The characters often become lost in their thoughts, imagining how a situation might play out or drifting into daydreams.

I enjoyed reading about Collette who is a very unhappy teenager, feeling ignored and bored with school and her school friends, none of whom really understand her. She figures out some of what’s going on in her family as the book progresses, in an understated and accidental manner. At one point she’s being nosey, looking at her mother’s address book: ‘She was guided by some instinct of cunning she didn’t know she possessed. The book fell open in her hands, to its pale blue back page and there, among the upholsterers and electricians, penciled very faintly in the corner, she found in Phyllis’ writing miniaturised as if it were in hiding, the letter….’ But I’ll say no more!

A beautifully observed novel with great insight and fabulous characterisation.

ditte's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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