The Party by Tessa Hadley: Coming of age in post-war Britain

Cover image for The Party by Tessa HadleyI’ve had mixed experiences with Tessa Hadley’s novels. I enjoyed Late in the Day but others I’ve read have left little impression on me. I’ve often thought her short fiction would suit me better so put up my hand for The Party. Hadley’s written many short stories, but this is her first novella which sees a party in post-war Bristol mark a significant step along the path to adulthood for two sisters

It was a dockers’ pub, Vincent had said, where prostitutes came to find customers. Evelyn had never seen prostitutes but she’d read about them in novels.

Clever, naive and eager for experience, Evelyn is in her first year of a French degree at Bristol’s university. Her elder sister, Moira, is an art student, more worldly than Evelyn with definite views about what she wants and a determination to get it. They both live at home where their father’s infidelity is barely hidden and their mother’s unhappiness palpable. Evelyn has decided to go to an art college party in a half-derelict pub in the city, knowing that her presence is likely to annoy Moira but eager to mix with the exotic, bohemian art crowd. They both catch the eye of Paul, a beautiful boy, clearly rich and very drunk, and his companion Sinden, older, dissolute and cynical. As the party becomes wilder, Evelyn and Moira make a hasty escape, just in time to catch the last bus home. When Sinden calls inviting them to a house in a wealthy area of Bristol, Moira sees an opportunity overcoming Evelyn’s reluctance. What follows is a night that changes them both.

Everything in the sisters’ future began unfolding from that morning.

Hadley packs a great deal into this brief novella, exploring class, social norms, marriage and gender in post-war Britain largely from Evelyn’s perspective, choosing her words carefully and with concision. The old order is portrayed as decadent and debauched, the insurgency in Malaya welcomed by Evelyn as the British Empire crumbles away, while social change has opened up a very different future from their mother’s life for the sisters. These are women eager for life, capable of writing off their experience with the depraved Sinden as a drunken mistake from which they emerge wiser, more the women they aspire to be. Bomb-damaged Bristol is strikingly evoked, part of the attraction for me as it’s a city I know well. No reservations about this one. I’ll be adding a collection of Hadley’s short stories to my to-buy list. Any recommendations?

Jonathan Cape London 9781787335554 128 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)

24 thoughts on “The Party by Tessa Hadley: Coming of age in post-war Britain”

  1. I’ve really admired her over the years. I’m glad you liked The Party. I have a copy and I’m looking forward to it. I skipped the last two novels. I personally believe that two novels, Accidents In the Home, and The Past, are her best among those I have read.

      1. I’ve always thought her short stories were her great strength. I suspect the novella may yet prove to be her true sweet spot territory!

  2. Tremendous—I’ve never read Hadley’s novels but have read at least one of her stories in the New Yorker (can’t rememeber which, now; helpful) and was really impressed by it. I think I read it in high school, so it was probably one that ended up in Sunstroke and Other Stories (2007). Maybe try that!

  3. The only Tessa Hadley story I’ve read is ‘Bad Dreams’ in Reverse Engineering II anthology which I thought was excellent. The short story collection with the same title that it comes from is now on my TBR.

  4. Another writer I’ve long been meaning to read. I recently picked up After The Funeral, her latest collection of short stories as a Kindle deal. I will definitely review that when I’ve read it. In the meantime, this sounds fantastic, very much my kind of thing, and straight onto the wish list.

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