Late in the Day

The two couples were the closest of friends Alex and Christine, and Zach and Lydia Before all four met each other, Lydia and Christine were friends from school, as were Alex and Zach When they all were living in England, their families spent a great deal of time together, and even their daughters grew up together While they each shared some similarities, each was very different from one another.One night, Alex and Christine plan for a quiet evening, when the idyll is broken by a phone call L The [...]

Beautifully written Two couples have been the best of friends since their twenties For over thirty years, it s been Zach and Lydia and Alex and Christine through it all One night Christine and Alex receive a call from Lydia Zach has unexpectedly passed away Interestingly, all the friends agree that Zach was the best of the group They put him on a posthumous pedestal and grief swallows their days Lydia is having such a difficult time, Alex and Christine have her move in with them But this Beautif [...]

With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow convinced that she s one of the greatest stylists alive The British author of seven novels and several story collections, Hadley regularly inspires such praise, but her success was hardly a foregone conclusion Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, didn t appear until she was 46, practically geriatric compared with those wunderkinds who secure contracts at the Iowa Writers Workshop and graduate into a field of laurels.There are compensations, With each [...]

Tessa Hadley is a master of her craft with writing that is consistently beautiful while seemingly effortless, displaying remarkable perception and uncanny insight when exploring human connection and the inner thoughts and feeling of her characters, never shying away from the faults and flaws found in an actual life She is an author that never rings false to me, always exhibiting an honesty and, I suppose, an innate wisdom in her writing Her new novel, which explores the way in which tragedy an T [...]

Tessa Hadley s writing is like a specific taste think cilantro, marzipan, or liver You either like it immediately or it doesn t mesh with your tastes I found myself trying very hard to get into the flow of the narrative but it was like an undertow No matter how hard I tried to stay afoot, I kept going down The novel begins with the death of Zachary, a charismatic man, cultured, strong and assured in every way, a gallery owner and part of the London art scene Of all the people in his circl Tessa [...]

It opens with a death right in the middle of possibly Schubert We are about to meet all the London characters, and the dead man, Zachary, going back and forth in time to include a quartet of married friends and their three adult children two are younger adults and then the shock and grief when he leaves them behind The death, unlike the music, is certain.Zachary s death was sudden and unexpected, his wife, Lydia, broken in pieces These are friendships that go back thirty plus years Hadle It open [...]

The you know about an author, the better you can understand and appreciate their work Late in the Day, the title, could apply to Hadley as well as to her characters, and knowing a bit of her history, of her coming to novelizations later than most, goes well to inform the reader of why she is so insightful in her creation of characters mature in outlook and experience The two couples that form the nucleus of this book are prime examples Although they met while young and developed close al The you [...]