After the Funeral

Reviews / Votes

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 * After the Funeral is a brilliant collection. From the virtuosity of Hadley's technique to the clarity of her moral vision and the warmth of her humour, what she has achieved in After the Funeral is nothing short of masterful. Her stories are surprising, profound, and each feels as full as a world -- Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans Beautifully done... The strongest stories resonate, offering glimpses of the hidden selves we all conceal * Sunday Times * She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare... One of the best fiction writers writing today -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah Short stories tend to be literary Marmite, but the dozen tales in Hadley's classy new collection are a testament to the startling power of both their author and the form itself` * Mail on Sunday * After the Funeral draws us into situations that bear out Tolstoy's famous line, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Each story explores a way of coping with a peculiar challenge... Hadley elicits the answer with an acumen that puts her among the great detectives of human nature * New Statesman, *Books of the Year* * Tessa Hadley is my favourite author -- Kate Atkinson, author of Shrines of Gaiety Hadley has elevated middle-class domesticity, and the emotional ripples beneath it, into the realms of high art... Her depictions of buried disappointment and quiet yearning are timeless... A reminder of just how sublime an experience reading a Tessa Hadley book is * i * Few writers give me such consistent pleasure -- Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth