The Party

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

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.


‘Tessa Hadley is my favourite author’ KATE ATKINSON


‘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 TÓIBÍN
‘Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book’
HILARY MANTEL


© Tessa Hadley 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

Critics Review

Few writers give me such consistent pleasure
Zadie Smith, author White Teeth
Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book
Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
She is one of the best fiction writers writing today
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus
The writer we didn’t know we were waiting for, until she arrived
Anne Enright, author of The Wren, The Wren
Something small but perfectly formed will always do well as Christmas draws near – ask Claire Keegan – and Tessa Hadley’s novella The Party looks just the ticket.
Observer
[An] exquisite work from one of our finest writers
i
The Party is a coming-of-age story humming with all the tightly packed resonances of a poem… Tessa Hadley is one of our finest chroniclers, and this novella is a glimmering, sensuous addition to her supremely elegant oeuvre
Financial Times
The novelist and short story writer Tessa Hadley is alternately beloved and teased for her focus on British middle-class life. But she does it so well… Hadley’s power is in the details
Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*
There is no-one who writes better about middle-class life in 20th- and 21st-century Britain than Tessa Hadley
Evening Standard
Though the book is short…Hadley’s touch [is] delicate as ever
Guardian

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