The Party (Hardback) - Tessa Hadley

An irresistible novella about two sisters and a night that changes everything, from the master chronicler of our heart's hidden desires.

'Tessa Hadley is my favourite author' KATE ATKINSON

Evelyn had the surprising thought that bodies were sometimes wiser than the people inside them. She'd have liked to impress somebody with this idea, but couldn't explain it.

On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students' party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn's misgivings.

As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives.

'Few writers give me such consistent pleasure'
ZADIE SMITH

'Hadley's extraordinary skill [is] making both surface life and deep interiors come fully alive'
COLM TOIBIN

'Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book'
HILARY MANTEL

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, Free Love and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams. She won the Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction in 2016, The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker.