I’ve been a fan of Tessa Hadley’s writing for some time, and
have loved many of her novels, such as The Master Bedroom and The London Train. Hadley’s writing is beautiful
and precise; she can describe her characters’ emotions to a T, but she is also
brilliant at evoking a sense of time and place.
In The Past, the rambling falling-down house set next to a
stream in the English countryside becomes another character in the book. Its
fate, whether it should be sold, renovated or kept as it is, has to be decided by the four
grown-up siblings, grand children to a respected minister and poet. The future of the house runs as a theme through the book, and is the reason the four are united for a last 3-week
summer holiday in Kington.
Alice is a failed actress, and at 46, the middle daughter. She has asked a young student of economics, Kasim, who is the son of Alice’s ex-lover, to accompany her. Alice's older sister, Harriet arrives alone, while her older brother, Roland, brings
his new wife – his third – the glamorous and exotic Argentinian, Pilar. There’s
also a dreamy teenage daughter, Molly. The youngest of the sisters, Fran comes
with her two children.
So as the reader, you think the scene is set nicely for at least some serious family fall-outs, or even some disaster, be it loss
of life, dignity or virginity.
The tension is beautifully built in the first half of the
novel, where we find about the siblings' childhoods, how their mother
died when Fran was still very young, and how they lost their grandparents, the original occupants in Kington.
There’s the promise of a burgeoning romance or two.
This is when the story moves back to the past, and we meet
the grandparents, Sophie and the Vicar,
and Jill, their daughter. We also get a glimpse into Jill’s turbulent marriage with
her husband, the idealistic journalist, Tom.
When the story moves back to the present, the events which
the author had been building up to in the first part come to pass – but mostly
off camera.
And this is my only gripe with The Past. Tessa Hadley sets
up the action beautifully, tantalisingly, only to let the events unfold without
allowing the reader in. Only one of the outcomes is described in the
present, and that too happens so quickly, as a reader you could have blinked
and it’s done. The author even states this herself, ‘The whole scene was over in a matter of a few seconds.’
Still, I would recommend this novel, for the pleasure of its
use of the English language and sentences such as the one below:
‘Kasim picked another
stem of grass and dusted its drooping, plumy head, heavy with seeds, against
Molly’s cheeks and her closed, protuberant, mauve eyelids.’
To buy The Past by Tessa Hadley click here or tap on the image above.
