Promotional Information

After just two novels, Accidents in the Home and Everything Will Be All Right, Tessa Hadley has established herself as one of the most perceptive and entertaining writers in Britain, 'a rare and startling gem' whose writing is 'fantastically subtle, absorbing and insightful' (Guardian). Sunstroke is her first collection of stories.

About the Author

Tessa Hadley is the author of eight highly praised novels- Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl, The Past, Late in the Day and Free Love, and four collections of stories- Sunstroke, Married Love, Bad Dreams and After the Funeral. She won the Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction in 2016, The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016 and she has twice been awarded the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, for 2018 and for 2024. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker.

Reviews

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure
*Zadie Smith*

She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today
*Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie*

Truly absorbing... a masterful yet understated read... More please
*Sunday Express*

Brilliant... Hadley's style is as discreet as good tailoring
*Independent*

The stories sparkle...Hadley is fascinating for the way she admits a fantasy or a missed chance can be more significant than the actual events that shape a life
*Metro*

Tessa Hadley excels in glimpses: those small, burning memories that we never lose and which haunt as well as remind... A wonderful collection
*Herald*

A wholly satisfying collection of stories...Distinguished by a dry humour and prose that often surprises but is never merely showy, Sunstroke catches life on the wing and pins it, fiercely struggling to the page
*Sunday Times*

A brooding, real-life collection bruised by knowledge and sustained by familiar discomfort
*Irish Times*

Really very sexy... she is the writer we didn't know we were waiting for, until she arrived
*Guardian*

Hadley is a talented writer
*Scotland on Sunday*

Ten elegant stories from Welsh author Hadley (Everything Will Be All Right) explore the various stages of women's experience. The title story, set at a seaside cottage in Wales and told in an austerely omniscient voice, tracks two attractive early-30ish mothers, one married, the other partnered, who each begin a flirtation with a visiting doctor friend. In "Mother's Son," the other woman in an adulterous affair that ended 20 years before finds herself ruefully counseling her grown son-the product of the affair-on dealing with his romantic troubles. Each of these beautifully crafted tales (some set in the 1970s) encapsulates a tender, transformative moment for these real characters, such as the provincial vicar's daughter in "Buckets of Blood" sent up to visit her older sister in Cambridge for the week who finds, to her horror and disappointment, her sister reeling from a miscarriage that puts her, like their worn-out mother, among the "ranks of women submerged and knowing amid their biology." In another tale, a man tracks down the now matronly woman who flirted with him when he was a blushing 13-year-old on a seaside holiday with his family 25 years before. Hadley's eerie, knowing portrayals speak to the heart as much as the mind. (Aug.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure -- Zadie Smith
She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today -- Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
Truly absorbing... a masterful yet understated read... More please * Sunday Express *
Brilliant... Hadley's style is as discreet as good tailoring * Independent *
The stories sparkle...Hadley is fascinating for the way she admits a fantasy or a missed chance can be more significant than the actual events that shape a life * Metro *