After the Funeral

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

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure

Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth

Tessa Hadley might be my new favourite writer. She just "gets" people, their flaws, their ignoble impulses, the transcendent moments

Marian Keyes, author of Grown Ups

Tessa Hadley is my favourite author

Kate Atkinson, author of Shrines of Gaiety

I love Tessa Hadley's subtle, humane writing; no one understands better our inner lives, and the shifts of power and chance and desire which shape us

Charlotte Mendelson, author of The Exhibitionist

What a peerless writer Tessa Hadley is! I so enjoyed these beguiling, subtle stories, each one suggesting a world that lives long after one's closed the book

Deborah Moggach, author of These Foolish Things

Few writers since Elizabeth Bowen seem as able to slip so effortlessly between forms, and few have such precision and sheer command - on a tonal and emotional level, at the level of each sentence, and of the short story form. Tessa Hadley's stories are written with a captivating ease. As one of her own characters says of Madame Bovary, there is a ferocious pure aim to Hadley's words that goes right to the heart - of each story, and of this reader. She is truly a great writer and this is a stunning collection

Lucy Caldwell, author of Intimacies

Tessa Hadley is my inspiration, my literary thrill, and my solace all at once. She is pure magic and After the Funeral is a triumph

Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers

Hadley takes on her subjects with such grace and insight, that reading her work makes you want to take notes on human behaviour. After the Funeral is magnetic, subtle and full of tensile strength

Nikita Lalwani, author of You People

Hadley has mastered the art of illuminating those brief, commonplace domestic moments which pass without fanfare but create ripples which never subside... Irresistible fiction

Big Issue, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Beautifully done... The strongest stories resonate, offering glimpses of the hidden selves we all conceal

Sunday Times

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

Hadley is fantastically inventive... A magnificent collection

Daily Telegraph

Another showcase for Hadley's virtuosity... After the Funeral is a revelation for aficionados of the form, as vibrant and knowing as the best of Hadley's celebrated career

Washington Post

Hadley proves herself a magician of short fiction with this wonderful collection featuring characters whose epiphanies shift their conception of their lives... Readers will marvel over these twisty and masterly tales

Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*

The mastery she has honed over a decades-long career makes Hadley's gaze as sharp as her empathy is expansive; each tale feels as satisfying as a full-length novel

Kirkus Reviews, *Starred*

A consummate storyteller, equally at home writing novels and short stories, Tessa Hadley possesses a brilliance that is hard to overstate... Impeccably literary, emotionally satisfying, yet unexpectedly unsettling... Harkening to a range of contemporaries (Henry James, Muriel Spark, and Elizabeth Bowen as well as Zadie Smith and Alice Munro), Hadley always delivers fiction that cuts to the quick

Boston Globe

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

Hadley writes the kind of books that many people think are easy to write - we're overrun with domestic novels about relationships, family, tragedy, life complications, the kind of events and dynamics that everyone has experience with. But Hadley, unlike most people, has the ability to evoke the depth and complexity that life truly holds

Lit Hub

Good short stories are complete and satisfying in themselves while leaving open the possibility of a continuing storyline; Hadley's stories do both very well

Library Journal

Hadley forensically lays bare people's foibles and frailties, but always with empathy

Red

The work of a singular talent... These are captivating stories, rich in character and fine-grained detail... Hadley entertains while offering shrewd, subtle insights into how we tick and the ties that bind us

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Every word is perfection in this short-story collection from the critically acclaimed Hadley, who excels at writing about the small earthquakes that shake up ordinary lives

Good Housekeeping

Effortlessly easy to read... and underpinned by meticulous thought and notices... The stories in After the Funeral are a triumph

Literary Review

One of our finest novelists and a short story supremo... It is hard to imagine stories more skilfully paced and polished than these

Observer

Told with elegance and ease, and burnished with a winning turn of phrase, her psychologically astute assessments of her (mostly) middle-class characters make these stories thrum with empathic emotional energy

Daily Mail

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

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

Hadley’s mastery of the free indirect style is so complete as to be exemplary. She draws us completely into her thematic worlds… After the Funeral is a document of unerring accomplishment

Times Literary Supplement

Hadley brings her eloquent prose and her psychological acuity to the relationships - between siblings, friends, lovers, parents, and children - that shape us and change us, that call into question our view of ourselves and our place in the world

New Yorker

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*

Hadley… writes with such clarity, making such story-telling look effortless, that the reading is a joy and delight on these dark autumn afternoons

Nation.Cymru