The London Train by Tessa Hadley

There is a touch of Brief Encounter about The London Train, Tessa Hadley’s 2011 novel featuring two parallel narratives that ultimately come together and connect. In one sense, this wonderfully subtle book can be viewed as an exploration of the fault lines and emotional disconnects in two seemingly stable marriages. Moreover, the story also highlights how these fissures can be exposed by random events, from the sudden disappearance of a daughter to a chance encounter on a train.

Structurally, the book is divided into two sections that initially appear to be separate novellas: The London Train and Only Children. However, by the time the reader reaches the midpoint of the second section, the connection between these beautifully constructed narratives becomes clear.

The first story revolves around Paul, a middle-aged writer and reviewer who lives in Wales with his second wife, Elise, a successful restorer of antiques, and their two young children, Becky and Joni. From an early stage, Hadley hints at an air of restlessness or lack of fulfilment surrounding Paul. Having recently lost his mother, Paul is haunted by dreams of his childhood, gnawing away at the guilt he feels over his infrequent visits before her death. While Elise and the girls provide Paul with a comfortable, loving home environment, he occasionally wishes that his life were more spontaneous and free-spirited – a little like that of his bohemian friend Gerald, a part-time University tutor, who seems to get by on a combination of humous, Scotch eggs and weed. Moreover, an ongoing dispute with his neighbour – the deliberatively obstructive farmer Willis – is a further source of agitation for Paul and Elise.

The story really gets going when Paul’s eldest daughter – nineteen-year-old Pia, from his earlier marriage to Annelies – goes missing from her London home. When Paul tracks Pia down, he discovers she is pregnant and living with the child’s father, a Polish man named Marek, in a squalid flat near King’s Cross. At first, it is unclear whether Marek is a conman, an entrepreneur, or a fantasist, with his dreams of setting up an import-export business for Polish delicatessen goods. Nevertheless, there is something magnetic about this quietly authoritative man and his sister, the equally compelling Anna. Consequently, Paul finds himself getting drawn into their world – to the point where he temporarily leaves Elise after a furious row to camp out with Pia and Marek in their claustrophobic flat.

As soon as Marek and Anna were in the flat, Paul saw that Anna was a force just as her brother was, and that Pia had been drawn to both of them, not just the man. Both moved with quick, contemptuous energy, crowding the place; Paul recognised that they were powerful, even if he wasn’t sure he liked them, and couldn’t understand yet what their link was to his daughter, or whether it was safe for her. (pp. 67–68).

In essence, the combination of tensions Paul is experiencing – his worries over the stability of Pia’s future with Marek; the guilt he feels about neglecting his mother; the ongoing row with Willis; and his underlying sense of restlessness – conspire to expose the fault lines in his relationship with Elise. Several differences between the couple rise to the surface, from the contrasts in their family backgrounds and social class to their current values and attitudes to life, prompting a kind of mid-life crisis for Paul as he starts to feel the pull of Anna.

Hadley’s second story focuses on thirty-something Cora, who has recently left her older husband, Robert, a rather stuffy and emotionally detached Civil Servant, high up in the Home Office. Cora is now living in Cardiff, having lovingly renovated her parents’ house following their deaths; and while her new role as a librarian is not particularly demanding, she enjoys the lack of stress after several years as an English teacher.

At heart, Cora keeps her feelings under wraps, finding it hard to confide in her closest friend, Frankie, who also happens to be Robert’s sister. While Robert tries to persuade Cora to return to London, she is content to remain in Wales, enjoying her freedom and a new-found air of self-possession. As far as Cora sees things, Robert appears to view their marriage as a kind of ‘contract or a piece of legislation’, not a living, breathing relationship driven by deep emotions.

Nothing could shake his [Robert’s] hierarchy of importance, where work was a fixed outer form, inside which personal things must find their place. Once, she had gloried in cutting herself to the right shape to fit it. (p. 172).

As you’ve probably guessed by now, these two stories come together when Paul and Cora meet by chance on the Cardiff-to-London train. An attraction gradually develops as they chat during the journey, culminating in an arrangement to meet again the next time Cora is in Cardiff. Before long, the pair are embroiled in a passionate affair, which feels especially liberating for Cora, given the sense of loneliness surrounding her marriage to Robert.  

Their relations were asymmetrical. She was the completed thing he wanted, and had got – he had seen her whole that very first time on the train, her strong particular stamp of personality written for him to read, clear as a hieroglyph; whereas she was absorbed in his life as it streamed forward, lost in him, not able to know everything he was. She couldn’t have imagined, in her old self, the pleasure to be had in such abandonment (p. 264)

I think I’ll leave it there in terms of the plot, save to say that Hadley plays with the timings of various events, moving smoothly from one timeline to another to weave her stories together.

One of the most impressive things about this novel is Hadley’s ability to create a strong connection between the reader and her central characters, especially Cora, whose inner life is portrayed with just the right degree of intimacy. In both stories, we see how seemingly stable marriages can be eroded over the years by small failings and disappointments, highlighting these characters’ relatable flaws and shortcomings.

Hadley also successfully draws out various parallels and connections between the two stories without the underlying themes ever feeling overworked. For instance, both Cora and Paul are separated from their respective partners – possibly temporarily or maybe more permanently. Both are grieving a parent with no siblings to share their grief or sense of loss. Both are at pivotal points in their lives when their choices are likely to have significant ramifications for themselves and others.

Running alongside the central theme of the fragility of marital relationships are various related areas, including coping with a family bereavement, female desire and self-possession, and the balance between freedom and domestic responsibility. There’s also a discernible undercurrent of unease about key social and political issues, ranging from the damaging effects of climate change to the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers, especially those earmarked for deportation. In his Home Office role, Robert is under investigation for a major fire at an immigration removal centre, with a formal inquiry due to reach a critical point. Once again, Hadley demonstrates subtlety in her treatment of these topics, conveying her perspective in a thoughtful and compelling way.

Robert’s fire, however, had been at one of the new purpose-built centres: brick buildings on brownfield sites, as blandly featureless from the outside as mail-order depots or units on an industrial estate. […] this modern apparatus for punishment stood lightly and provisionally in the landscape, like so many husks, or ugly litter. The appearance of the buildings, Cora thought, was part of the pretence that what was processed inside them was nothing so awful or contaminating as flesh and blood. The buildings made possible the dry husks of language in the reports that Robert read, and wrote. (p. 191).

In summary then, The London Train is an exquisitely written novel on the messy business of middle-class life and the vulnerability of seemingly stable relationships. Yet, by the end of this richly textured book, there is a sense of optimism for the future, the possibility of reconnections, new beginnings, and a deeper understanding as the dust settles on these characters’ lives. Highly recommended for lovers of character-driven fiction with a focus on interiority.

Bad Dreams by Tessa Hadley

Last year I read and thoroughly enjoyed Tessa Hadley’s The Past, a beautifully-observed novel about four adult siblings coming together for a holiday at their old family home. It’s a character-driven book, full of subtle tensions and frustrations, demonstrating the author’s insight into family dynamics and human nature. There’s a similar degree of perceptiveness in Bad Dreams, an impressive collection of short stories, all with female protagonists at the heart.

Seven of the ten stories included here were first published in the New Yorker, and are probably still available to read online. Nevertheless, by experiencing them together in this volume, certain patterns begin to appear – common threads and themes, similar structural patterns or motifs – adding texture and depth.

While these stories are rooted in the everyday, Hadley seems particularly interested in what happens when the mundanity of life is interrupted – typically by a new experience or a chance encounter with the potential to disrupt.

In An Abduction – one of the most memorable stories in the collection – Jane, a bored fifteen-year-old girl, home from boarding school for the summer holidays, accepts a lift from three unfamiliar boys in a sports car. Older and more experienced than Jane, the boys are living the high life in a large Surrey house, dabbling with drink and drugs while their parents are away. What follows isn’t quite the horror story the reader might be expecting given the set-up. Still, it’s unsettling nonetheless, culminating in a coda that adds another layer to the narrative.

Experience is another story in this vein, with the protagonist crossing a line into an intriguing new world. When Laura needs a new place to live following the breakdown of her marriage, a friend hooks her up with Hana, a sophisticated, glamorous woman with a spacious house in London. Hana wants someone to look after her home while she spends time in the US, so Laura moves in rent-free to caretake in Hana’s absence. Having settled into the house, Laura begins to step into Hana’s shoes – eating her food, reading her secret diaries, even wearing her clothes now and again.

I had thought that I would forget about Hana once she was out of the house, but moving around inside the shapes of her life, I found myself more powerfully impressed by her than I had been when she was present. The wardrobes full of her clothes stood in for her: velvet trousers and brocade jackets, an evening dress of pleated chiffon with a sequinned bodice – everything padded and sculpted, each outfit a performance in itself. (p. 90)

When Hana’s on/off lover, Julian, calls at the house to pick up some stuff, the visit offers Laura the opportunity to go deeper into Hana’s life. Laura begins to fantasise about a liaison with Julian, a chance to experience something more thrilling than the tame relationship she experienced with her husband. It’s an excellent story with several possibilities for the ending – but Hadley pitches it just right, resisting the temptation for too much spectacle or drama.

There’s a chance encounter of a different kind in Under the Sign of the Moon, another excellent story despite its somewhat uninspiring title! In this piece, Greta, a middle-aged married woman recovering from an illness, travels by train to Liverpool to visit her daughter, Kate. While Greta would prefer to read her book during the journey, the young man sitting opposite her is desperate to talk. After a while, Greta relents, and the pair strike up a conversation, culminating in them sharing a coffee at the station while Greta waits for Kate to arrive. There’s something sad and lonely about this man with his quaint, polite manner and dated clothes – compounded perhaps by his mother’s recent death.

As the two travellers part ways, the man hurriedly issues an invitation for Greta to meet him again later in the week, stating a specific time and place for the rendezvous. Greta declines to reply at the time, but when the day in question duly arrives, she surprises herself by following through, with rather unexpected results! Once again, this is another story with multiple possibilities for development. I won’t spoil things by saying how the potential meeting turns out, but it’s an interesting one for sure.

Other stories showcase Hadley’s skills at viewing situations from a child’s point of view – how strange and unknowable the world can seem when we’re only nine or ten. In One Saturday Morning, ten-year-old Carrie is alone in the house when Dom, a friend of her parents, calls with some bad news about his wife. Hadley perfectly captures the emotions children experience when the mood shifts – a longing for the normality of life to return when sadness disrupts events.

He was set apart, just as his wife had been set apart – except that it was worse with Dom, because he persisted, discomforting in all his living bulk, putting himself in the way of Carrie’s thoughts when she tried to be rid of him. She longed to hear the door shut behind him and for the dinner-party preparations to be resumed, however belatedly – for the whole ordinary process of living to start into motion again, downstairs in the kitchen. (p. 79)

The titular story, Bad Dreams – one of the highlights in the collection – explores a domestic scenario from two different perspectives. Firstly, we see what happens when a young girl wakes at night after dreaming about her favourite story; then we cut to the girl’s mother when she is disturbed later the same night. In both instances, the characters walk around the house, their movements and actions revealing much about the family members within – their habits and preoccupations, their vulnerabilities and flaws. It’s a terrific story, relatively simple on the surface yet full of insights and depth.

Other stories hinge on specific items being passed from one family member to another, providing a framework for exploring the characters’ lives and the fault lines that have developed over time. In Flight, a silk scarf passes from one estranged sister to another, a gift to help atone for past failings and absences. Silk Brocade features a similar motif – in this instance, a sumptuous length of silk is earmarked for a wedding dress until tragedy intervenes.

There’s also a brilliant story about an old man who wishes to leave his house to his carer, Marina, much to her embarrassment. The relationship between these two individuals is beautifully drawn, complete with moments of tenderness and frustration as the man’s life draws to a close. Possibly my favourite piece in the collection, the meaning of the story’s title — The Stain — becomes clear as elements from the past begin to emerge.

In summary then, Bad Dreams is an excellent of stories, elegantly conveyed. While most are set in contemporary times, a few pieces reach back to the 1950s and ‘60s (or occasionally even earlier), boding well for Hadley’s latest novel, Free Love, with its late ‘60s setting. 

Bad Dreams is published by Vintage; personal copy.

My books of the year 2021 – part one, recently published books

2021 has been another tumultuous year for many of us – maybe not as horrendous as 2020, but still very challenging. In terms of books, various changes in my working patterns enabled me to read some excellent titles this year, the best of which feature in my highlights. My total for the year is somewhere in the region of 100 books, which I’m very comfortable with. This isn’t a numbers game for me – I’m much more interested in quality than quantity when it comes to reading!

This time, I’m spreading my books of the year across two posts – ‘recently published’ books in this first piece, with older titles to follow next week. As many of you will know, quite a lot of my reading comes from the 20th century. But this year, I’ve tried to read a few more recently published books – typically a mixture of contemporary fiction and some new memoirs/biographies. So, the division of my ‘books of the year’ posts will reflect something of this split. (I’m still reading more backlisted titles than new, but the contemporary books I chose to read this year were very good indeed. I’m also being quite liberal with my definition of ‘recently published’ as a few of my favourites came out in 2017-18.)

Anyway, enough of the preamble! Here are my favourite recently published books from a year of reading. These are the books I loved, the books that have stayed with me, the ones I’m most likely to recommend to other readers. I’ve summarised each one in this post (in order of reading), but you can find the full reviews by clicking on the appropriate links.

Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan

Every now and again, a book comes along that catches me off-guard – surprising me with its emotional heft, such is the quality of the writing and depth of insight into human nature. Mayflies, the latest novel from Andrew O’Hagan, is one such book – it is at once both a celebration of the exuberance of youth and a love letter to male friendship, the kind of bond that seems set to endure for life. Central to the novel is the relationship between two men: Jimmy Collins, who narrates the story, and Tully Dawson, the larger-than-life individual who is Jimmy’s closest friend. The novel is neatly divided into two sections: the first in the summer of ’86, when the boys are in their late teens/early twenties; the second in 2017, which finds the pair in the throes of middle age. There are some significant moral and ethical considerations being explored here with a wonderful lightness of touch. An emotionally involving novel that manages to feel both exhilarating and heartbreaking.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

A very striking novel that is by turns an existential murder mystery, a meditation on life in an isolated, rural community, and, perhaps most importantly, an examination of our relationship with animals and their place in the hierarchy of society. That might make Plow sound heavy or somewhat ponderous; however, nothing could be further from the truth! This is a wonderfully accessible book, a metaphysical novel that explores some fascinating and important themes in a highly engaging way. Arresting, poetic, mournful, and blacky comic, Plow subverts the traditional expectations of the noir genre to create something genuinely thought-provoking and engaging. The eerie atmosphere and sense of isolation of the novel’s setting – a remote Polish village in winter – are beautifully evoked.

The Shadowy Third by Julia Parry

When Julia Parry comes into possession of a box of letters between her maternal grandfather, the author and academic, Humphry House, and the esteemed Anglo-Irish writer, Elizabeth Bowen, it sparks an investigation into the correspondence between the two writers. Their relationship, it transpires, was an intimate, clandestine one (Humphry was married to Madeline, Parry’s grandmother at the time), waxing and waning in intensity during the 1930s and ‘40s. What follows is a quest on Parry’s part to piece together the story of Humphry’s relationship with Bowen – much of which is related in this illuminating and engagingly written book. Partly a collection of excerpts from the letters, partly the story of Parry’s travels to places of significance to the lovers, The Shadowy Third is a fascinating read, especially for anyone interested in Bowen’s writing. (It was a very close call between this and Paula Byrne’s Pym biography, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, but the Parry won through in the end.)

The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy

This luminous meditation on marriage, womanhood, writing and reinvention is the second part of Deborah Levy’s ‘living autobiography’ trilogy – a series which commenced in 2014 with Things I Don’t Want to Know. In essence, this fascinating memoir conveys Levy’s reflections on finding a new way to live following the breakdown of her marriage after twenty or so years, prompting her to embrace disruption as a means of reinvention. Levy has a wonderful ability to see the absurdity in day-to-day situations, frequently peppering her reflections with irony and self-deprecating humour.

This is an eloquent, poetic, beautifully structured meditation on so many things – not least, what should a woman be in contemporary society? How should she live?

A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray by Dominique Barbéris (tr. John Cullen)

This beautiful, evocative novella is set in Paris on a Sunday afternoon in September, just at the crossover point between summer and autumn. The narrator – an unnamed woman – drives from the city centre to the Parisian suburb of Ville-d’Avray to visit her married sister, Claire Marie. As the two sisters sit and chat in the garden, an intimate story emerges, something the two women have never spoken about before. Claire Marie reveals a secret relationship from her past, a sort of dalliance with a mysterious man whom she met at her husband’s office. What emerges is a story of unspoken desire, missed opportunities and avenues left unexplored. This haunting, dreamlike novella is intimate and hypnotic in style, as melancholy and atmospheric as a dusky autumn afternoon.

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri (tr. by the author)

This slim, beautifully constructed novella is an exploration of solitude, a meditation on aloneness and the sense of isolation that can sometimes accompany it. The book – which Lahiri originally wrote in Italian and then translated into English – is narrated by an unnamed woman in her mid-forties, who lives in a European city, also nameless but almost certainly somewhere in Italy. There’s a vulnerability to this single woman, a fragility that gradually emerges as she goes about her days, moving from place to place through a sequence of brief vignettes. As we follow this woman around the city, we learn more about her life – things are gradually revealed as she reflects on her solitary existence, sometimes considering what might have been, the paths left unexplored or chances that were never taken. This is an elegant, quietly reflective novella – Lahiri’s prose is precise, poetic and pared-back, a style that feels perfectly in tune with the narrator’s world.

The Past by Tessa Hadley

A subtle novel of family relationships and tensions, written with real skill and psychological insight into character, The Past revolves around four adult siblings – Harriet, Alice, Fran and Roland – who come together for a three-week holiday at the Crane family home in Kington, deep in the English countryside. The siblings have joint ownership of the house, and one of their objectives during the trip is to decide the property’s fate. The inner life of each individual is richly imagined, with Hadley moving seamlessly from one individual’s perspective to the next throughout the novel. Everything is beautifully described, from the characters’ preoccupations and concerns, to the house and the surrounding countryside. A nearby abandoned cottage and its mysterious secrets are particularly vividly realised, adding to the sense of unease that pulses through the narrative. My first by Hadley, but hopefully not my last.

Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell

A luminous collection of eleven stories about motherhood – mostly featuring young mothers with babies and/or toddlers, with a few focusing on pregnancy and mothers to be. Caldwell writes so insightfully about the fears young mothers experience when caring for small children. With a rare blend of honesty and compassion, she shows us those heart-stopping moments of anxiety that ambush her protagonists as they go about their days. Moreover, there is an intensity to the emotions that Caldwell captures in her stories, a depth of feeling that seems utterly authentic and true. By zooming in on her protagonists’ hopes, fears, preoccupations and desires, Caldwell has found the universal in the personal, offering stories that will resonate with many of us, irrespective of our personal circumstances.

Blitz Spirit by Becky Brown

In this illuminating book, Becky Brown presents various extracts from the diaries submitted as part of the British Mass-Observation project during the Second World War. (Founded in 1937, Mass-Observation was an anthropological study, documenting the everyday lives of ordinary British people from all walks of life.) The diary extracts presented here do much to debunk the nostalgic, rose-tinted view of the British public during the war, a nation all pulling together in one united effort. In reality, people experienced a wide variety of human emotions, from the novelty and excitement of facing something new, to the fear and anxiety fuelled by uncertainty and potential loss, to instances of selfishness and bickering, particularly as restrictions kicked in. Stoicism, resilience and acts of kindness are all on display here, alongside the less desirable aspects of human behaviour, much of which will resonate with our recent experiences of the pandemic.

My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley

A brilliantly observed, lacerating portrayal of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship that really gets under the skin. Riley’s sixth novel is a deeply uncomfortable read, veering between the desperately sad and the excruciatingly funny; and yet, like a car crash unfolding before our eyes, it’s hard to look away. The novel is narrated by Bridget, who is difficult to get a handle on, other than what she tells us about her parents, Helen (aka ‘Hen’) and Lee. This fascinating character study captures the bitterness, pain and irritation of a toxic mother-daughter relationship with sharpness and precision. The dialogue is pitch-perfect, some of the best I’ve read in recent years, especially when illustrating character traits – a truly uncomfortable read for all the right reasons.  

And finally, a few honourable mentions for the books that almost made the list:

• Second Sight – an eloquent collection of film writing by the writer and critic, Adam Mars-Jones;
• Nomadland – Jessica Bruder’s eye-opening account of nomad life in America;
• Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson’s poetic, multifaceted novella;
• and The Years – Annie Ernaux’s impressive collective biography (tr. Alison L. Strayer), a book I admired hugely but didn’t love as much as others.

So that’s it for my favourite recently published titles from a year of reading. Do let me know your thoughts below – and join me again next week when I’ll be sharing my favourite ‘older’ books with plenty of treats still to come!

The Past by Tessa Hadley

This is a wonderfully nuanced novel of family relationships and tensions, written with real skill and psychological insight into character. My first experience of Hadley’s fiction, but hopefully not my last…

The Past revolves around four adult siblings – Harriet, Alice, Fran and Roland – who come together for a three-week holiday at the Crane family home in Kington, deep in the English countryside. The siblings have joint ownership of the house, and one of their objectives during the trip is to decide the property’s fate. In short, the time may have finally come for them to sell before the upkeep on the house becomes too much.

Harriet (the eldest I think), is the most restrained of the Cranes. Despite her worthwhile job and interest in activism, Harriet feels that other, more emotional aspects of life have passed her by – a realisation that becomes increasingly apparent as the narrative progresses. Alice, a romantic, expressive individual at heart, has brought along her ex-boyfriend’s son, nineteen-year-old Kasim, seemingly on a bit of a whim.

Fran is the most grounded and well-organised of the siblings. A schoolteacher by profession, she is accompanied by her two children, the curious and watchful Ivy (aged nine) and the suggestible Arthur (aged six). Both of these characters are brilliantly realised, fleshed out in ways that remind me of some of Elizabeth Taylor’s and Penelope Fitzgerald’s fictional children. Fran’s husband, Jeff, has cried off at the last minute – clearly a source of frustration for Fran, who is left wondering whether her marriage is worth salvaging. Finally, Roland arrives with his third wife, Pilar, a highly-strung Argentinian lawyer, and Molly, his sixteen-year-old daughter from an earlier marriage.

Although very little happens in terms of plot, there is a discernible undercurrent of unease running through the narrative, which adds a degree of tension to this beautifully constructed book.

Not long after their arrival, Alice crosses a boundary with Roland, and her desire to reflect nostalgically on the past prompts an eruption from Pilar, who is still very much a newcomer to the group.

They were all affected by Pilar’s new presence among them – it had the effect of making their talk at the table seem false, as if they were performing their family life for her scrutiny. Alice and Fran were noisy, showing off; Fran exaggerated the drama of Jeff’s selfishness, his dereliction. Ivy spilled her drink, Arthur picked out all the cheese from his sandwich, then left the crusts; Kasim when he appeared wouldn’t sit down for lunch – he said he wasn’t hungry and then carved himself huge hunks of bread, ate them sitting on the grass at the bottom of the garden. Pilar didn’t contribute much to the conversation, the conversation, her remarks were rapid and forceful like her concentrated, liquid glances, as if she closed the discussion instead of opening it up. (p. 41)

Family, it seems, is not always a source of comfort, especially to someone like Pilar, who was raised during Argentina’s Dirty War and the era of the ‘disappeared’. Pilar begins to bond with Harriet during the holiday, viewing her as a potential confidante for her personal history and concerns. It’s another relationship where boundaries are ultimately overstepped, forcing a sequence of events that threaten to derail the holiday.

Elsewhere, the self-confident Kasim has designs on Molly, hatching a plan to seduce her in a nearby derelict cottage – a place that also holds a fascination for Ivy and Arthur, mostly as a secret hideaway where they can escape from the adults.

In a nod to Elizabeth Bowen’s The House in Paris (which I’ve yet to read), Hadley divides her novel into three sections, The Present, The Past and The Present. It’s a structure that enables her to show how earlier events can seep into the here and now, albeit in subtle and surprising ways. The middle section focuses on the siblings’ mother, Jill, who in 1968 is back with her parents in Kington, wondering what to do with her life following a break-up with her philandering husband, Tom. A brief dalliance between Jill and a local man at the abandoned cottage hints at a potential secret in the Crane family, something that may or may not come out in The Present. It’s to Hadley’s credit that she never pushes this and other connections too far, favouring nuance and subtlety over thrills and shocking revelations – a degree of control she maintains throughout.

In summary, The Past is a very absorbing novel, full of subtle, understated observations. The inner lives of these characters are richly imagined, with Hadley moving seamlessly from one individual’s perspective to another throughout the novel. Everything is beautifully described, from the characters’ preoccupations and concerns, to the house and the surrounding countryside. The abandoned cottage and its mysterious secrets are particularly vividly realised, adding to the sense of unease that pulses through the narrative.

Highly recommended, especially for lovers of subtle, character-driven fiction – it reminded me a little of Penelope Lively’s Heat Wave, a novel I very much enjoyed last year.

The Past (first published in 2015) is published by Vintage; personal copy.