Review by Booklist Review
London in 1967 is all Carnaby Street, kohl-eyed girls, and lanky lads in brocade vests. It's a terrible time to be a 40-year-old mother of two stagnating in a cozy house on the outskirts, but that's just what Phyllis Fischer is. With her stodgy Foreign Office husband, precocious son, and moody teenage daughter, Phyllis is content enough, she supposes, until the evening the twentysomething son of her husband's friend comes for dinner. Nicky is louche, disdainful, and borderline rude, but when he and Phyllis steal a kiss, it ignites a passion that Phyllis assumed was well in her past. Their affair quickly ends the Fischers' marriage and launches an adventurous life for Phyllis in London's swinging counter-culture--think The Graduate told from Mrs. Robinson's point of view. Hadley (Late in the Day, 2019) creates a palpable longing and beguiling innocence in her sensuous depiction of the giddy headiness of rediscovered love, the aching distraction of physical desire, and the agonizing rationalization of selfish decisions that will upend others' lives. With a truth-twisting revelation sure to evoke a throaty "OMG!" cry of amazement, Hadley's indelible portrait of a woman defying conventions in pursuit of personal fulfillment flawlessly captures a signature time with timeless sensitivity and passion.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The poignant, ironic latest from Hadley (Late in the Day) is drenched in the atmosphere of late-1960s Britain, when the lives of women seemed to be changing radically, but maybe, in fact, weren't so much. In 1967, Phyllis Fischer is 40 years old, "pleased with her life" as a housewife in suburban London, married to civil servant Roger, and mother to charming nine-year-old Hugh and discontented 15-year-old Colette. But, as the detached, observant narrator notes, "under the placid surface of suburbia, something was unhinged." Soon Phyllis is involved, to Colette's chagrin, in an affair with Nicholas, the 20-something son of family friends. What seems at first to be a simple tale of adultery and its consequences twists into something between a "cosmic comedy" (as Nicholas's mother calls it) and a "situation as fatally twisted as a Greek drama" (according to the narrator) as the affair reveals unexpected connections between Phyllis's family and Nicholas's. The narrator's wise, disaffected view of life homes in on the shakiness of Phyllis's sentimental education. In keen, lush prose, Hadley conveys the many ways her characters delude themselves amid fraught relationships between parents and children as well as between lovers. The result is sumptuous and surprising. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
It might be 1967 England, but the conventional Fischers--dedicated mom Polly; Roger, a Foreign Office careerist and loving father; and their teenage children, smart Collette and savvy Hugh--aren't exactly swinging. At least not until the son of an old friend comes to dinner and drunkenly kisses Polly, which sets her on fire and ends up subverting the entire family. From Windham-Campbell Prize winner Hadley; with a 40,000-copy first printing.
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