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The Past

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About this listen

 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 Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

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)
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I love Tessa Hadley’s style and it is almost enough to just spend time in her perfectly described nuanced world, but after Late in the Day, which fascinated me, not enough happened in this book to really satisfy.

Beautifully read but the story is a bit thin

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The writing is remarkable; vivid descriptions of places and sensitive understanding of people and their feelings and motives, but what a pity she didn't have a story to tell . The "events" are left to the closing pages, but it's a bit late then.

But....

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For me, the slow discovery of meaning, and underlying causes, that revealed itself to the reader, while getting pulled into the subtleties of each character, rang very true to life!
Becoming aware of the underlying patterns of ones life, and that of others, requires patience. This might feel boring to some, but to me it felt very accurate!

meaning, slowly,revealing itself.

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The womb-like atmosphere of extended family congregating in a long-known place of history and tradition rang true for me. A story of subtleties rather than pace. I enjoyed being lulled into it's claustrophobic atmosphere.

Loved it

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Very boring, slow and uninteresting. Very little happens and I was not interested in any of the characters.

Boring

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