The Writers of Wales Database

HADLEY, TESSA

You can contact Tessa through her publishers, Jonathan Cape on: 0207 840 8400

Tessa Hadley is a renowned novelist and short story writer. Born in Bristol in 1956, she studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and subsequently gained a MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College. Tessa has lived in Cardiff since 1982. She has published four novels, one collection of stories, and a work of literary criticism on Henry James.

A Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, she specialises in Critical Reading, Women Writers, ‘The Novel’ and ’The Short Story’. Her research interests include Jane Austen and Henry James, and also early twentieth century writers including Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys and Katherine Mansfield. Tessa’s short stories appear regularly in the New Yorker, Granta and other magazines. Accidents in the Home (Jonathan Cape, 2002) was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right (Jonathan Cape, 2004) was shortlisted for the Encore Award and Sunstroke (Jonathan Cape, 2007) was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. The Master Bedroom (Jonathan Cape, 2007) was on the Wales Book of the Year 2008 Long List. Tessa's fourth novel The London Train (Cape, 2011) was published in early 2011.

Tessa was invited to present a paper at a Yale University symposium on 'Why Literature Matters' in April 2005, and on 'Reading Henry James as a contemporary writer' at the University of Aberdeen Centre for the Novel in November 2006. She was External Examiner for the Oxford University Diploma in Creative Writing (2002- 2005) and for the Bristol University Diploma in Creative Writing (2002-2006). She chairs the editorial board for the New Welsh Review and reviews regularly for the London Review of Books. Tessa is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

Reviews:

“…Hadley writes with an attention to detail that is not atomizing but empathetically expansive…”
Stephanie Cross, TLS

“…Distinguished by a dry humour and prose that often surprises but is never merely showy…”
Peter Parker, Sunday Times

“…It is as though 19th–century values – about the proper use of intelligence, perhaps, and of conversation – have been applied to contemporary ideas about desire. The result is very sexy. It is also exhilarating, as honest work can be…”
Anne Enright, Guardian
 

Selected Publications:
Accidents in the Home (Cape, 2002)
Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Everything Will Be All Right (Cape, 2004)
Sunstroke and Other Stories (Cape, 2007)
The Master Bedroom (Cape, 2007)
The London Train (Cape, 2011)
Married Love (Cape, 2012)

Contributed to:
Sea Stories (contributor) (National Maritime Museum, 2007)




Everything Will Be All Right (Cape, 2004)

England, just after the Second World War. Two sisters are bringing up their children in an old grey house on an estuary. Lil is a widow; Vera has a husband who keeps his suits in the wardrobe but spends time mysteriously at another house nearby. Lil’s daughter Joyce watches her mother and aunt, seeing that there is something missing in their lives: men. When Joyce’s daughter Zoe grows up and has a baby of her own, she proves impatient with domestic life, and chooses a very different path. Spanning five decades of extraordinary change in women’s lives, this novel explores the complicated relationships of one family. The young are sure that they can correct the mistakes of their parents. The truth, of course, is more opaque.

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Sunstroke and Other Stories (Cape, 2007)

Ten substantial short stories capturing a wide range of female (and occasionally male) preoccupations and self–deceptions. A recurring theme in the stories is time, but the tone ranges widely from fearful experiences to emotional confusion to tenderness and humour.

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The Master Bedroom (Cape, 2007)

Kate Flynn has always been a clever girl, brought up to believe in herself as something special. Having given up her university career in London to come home and look after her mother, she Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days. She begins to obsess about him, even though she knows it’s because she’s bored and hasn’t got anything else to do. David is married, rational, dependable: the last type to want an affair. This intricate, graceful novel explores the tangled web of connections between parents and children, lovers and friends; the past casts its long shadows in the present; men and women who were once confident they knew themselves, learn to attend to the changes unfolding inside them.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover

Married Love (Cape 2012)

Lottie announces at the breakfast table that she is getting married. The youngest daughter of a large and close-knit family, Lottie is nineteen but looks five years younger. Her fiancé is Edgar Lennox, a composer of religious music and lecturer at Lottie's university, forty-five years her senior. We follow as Lottie's life unfolds; her marriage to Edgar, the tiny flat they share, the children that follow. It is a story of romantic dreams and daily reality, family loyalties tested but holding, and the comedy and solace to be found in small moments. Evoking a world that expands beyond the pages, it marks the beginning of what is an astonishing new collection.