The Past

By: Tessa Hadley

Narrated by: Antonia Beamish

Three sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents' old house for three long, hot summer weeks. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past, but now they may have to sell it. And under the idyllic surface, there are tensions. Secrets are uncovered, and passions erupt as a way of life - bourgeois, literate, ritualised - winds down to its inevitable end.

©2015 Tessa Hadley (P)2015 W F Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"Hadley is a writer of exceptional intelligence and skill and, for all the apparent conventionality of her vision, hers is a subtly subversive talent." ( Observer)

"There is something reassuring yet deliciously unexpected about a Tessa Hadley novel." ( Daily Telegraph)

Thoroughly believable!

The book gradually grew on me, drawing me in slowly. The characters and their idiosyncrasies seem thoroughly believable, as if the could belong in any family. I can relate. It's uncanny.

Tedious Reading

The novel has got such praise in book reviews that I can only attribute its tediousness in this version to the narrator. Such a monotone delivery failed to enliven and even failed to clearly delineate one character from another. I won’t be reading or hearing any more Tessa Hadley - this, A’s I’ve said above, may well be attributable to the narrator rather than to the author.