My husband and I like to play Tessa Hadley bingo whenever she has a new book out. You get a point if one of the characters is dressed in a bad outfit, which the author seems rather to admire – a purple jacket with orange tassels; a long felt skirt; a beret, maybe at an angle. You get another point if a beautiful boy-man steals the heart of the story’s older heroine; bonus points if he is unaware of his beauty, a little callous, elegant or golden-skinned.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Sally Rooney said she thought originality was overrated: that she didn’t much mind the idea that she might end up producing variations on the same novel for the rest of her writing life. The 68-year-old Hadley has more or less done this, and her fans are grateful for it. She may be a writer easy to tease – from afar – but I can think of no other contemporary novelist as perceptive, as reliably enjoyable and as attentive to the rustlings of the human heart.
Her latest book, The Party, is very brief. But that’s a good thing; for my money, Hadley is at her best over short distances. In the Olympics, this would be her 800m race and she’d win gold. The story is about two sisters (this wins another point) who have a close but slightly awful relationship. Our allegiances are with Evelyn, who is studying French at university and considers herself ‘clever’; she is thin and good-looking but uncomfortable in her skin, aware of her inexperience and of the sheltered life she has led so far.
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