... brilliant and upsetting ... In the hands of a lesser novelist, the intricate tangle of lives at the center of Late in the Day might feel like just such a self-satisfied riddle or, at best, like sly narrative machinations. Because this is Tessa Hadley, it instead feels earned and real and, even in its smallest nuances, important ... Here as in her previous six novels, it’s in part Hadley’s unflinching dissection of moments and states of consciousness that makes the [Virginia] Woolf comparisons irresistible, but it’s also her commitment to following digressions both mental and philosophical (a debate, for instance, on the ethics of tourism) rather than pushing away at plot ... It’s to her great credit that Hadley manages to be old-fashioned and modernist and brilliantly postmodern all at once ... We’ve seen this before, and we’ve never seen this before, and it’s spectacular.
More than many of her contemporaries, the British writer Tessa Hadley understands that life is full of moments when the past presses up against the present, and when the present transforms the past. Her brilliant new novel, Late in the Day, explores both with equal urgency ... Hadley is masterful at showing her characters over time ... At the heart of Late in The Day are ineffable, unanswerable questions... In Hadley’s gorgeous, utterly absorbing novel we experience these questions, as her characters do, moving between light and darkness, and back again.
With each new book by Tessa Hadley, I grow more convinced that she’s one of the greatest stylists alive ... [The events in the book are] nothing unusual, I suppose, just the everyday tragedies and betrayals of domestic life but rendered by Hadley’s prose into something extraordinary ... The tone of Late in the Day is perhaps Hadley’s most delicate accomplishment. This is romantic comedy pulled by a hearse. The whole grief-steeped story should be as fun as a dirge, but instead it feels effervescent — lit not with mockery but with the energy of Hadley’s attention, her sensitivity to the abiding comedy of human desire.
Relationships of love and friendship with deep roots in the past are thoughtfully examined ... The two overlapping sets of couples allow Hadley to examine shifting dynamics over long stretches of time. Even-numbered chapters interrupt and contextualize the present-day narrative of the events that follow Zachary’s death, diving back into the past ... a freshly and fully imagined fiction ... Hadley moves between the characters’ perspectives in a style whose equivalent in cinematic editing would be the dissolve rather than the cut. The transitions are often elusive, leaving perceptions suspended without an obvious perceiver, and sometimes there seems to be an omniscience waiting in the wings ... The success of this technique is dependent on the point of view having definite edges, something Hadley doesn’t always regard as a priority ... the topology of perspectives is precarious, a double bubble that is highly likely to burst. In any case, when points of view proliferate the psychological space available to the reader is whittled away rather than opened up ... There’s just one moment in the book where its theme (the shifting balance of relationships) and its method (shifting points of view) coincide. This doesn’t reflect any limitation on Hadley’s talent: the two fluctuating dynamics don’t connect and can only distract from each other ... Here and there in her splendid new novel Tessa Hadley loses sight of the illumination that can be contributed by areas of darkness.
There are some writers who never let you down... Tessa Hadley is one such writer ... Hadley sets the scene for a thoughtful rumination on the different types of attachments we form in life, and in the early chapters this is both contemplative and astute, but then she turns everything on its head halfway through with a plot twist that feels as unexpected as it does natural ... [Hadley] has a keen psychological insight that allows her to create multifaceted characters that remain with the reader long after the story has come to an end. It’s no surprise, then, that Late in the Day is a powerful addition to her already distinguished body of work. Really, a rather brilliant novel.
In Late in the Day [Hadley] continues her persistent exploration of human frailty and resilience, moving easily between the present and the past to reveal the hard edges and silent compromises that shape all relationships ... with compassion and insight, Hadley raises the possibility of hope for these wonderfully imperfect characters. Even after the unthinkable, they—and we—may stumble upon what we need.
... here’s the thing – [the book is] wonderful. Hadley might not be the most exotic author but she’s an increasingly rare one. In less capable hands, her 'low-octane' stories (as one critic dubbed them) about the quotidian aches of marriage, parenthood, ageing and friendship would be grating. But her prose – measured, ironic, disarmingly perceptive – picks up on all the contradictions of human existence. With Hadley, you know there’s an adult in the room ... Admittedly, some of the urbane chitchat is grating; but there’s still so much to enjoy about the finely choreographed group dynamics ... There’s a lovely stillness to Hadley’s writing, like an old house with many rooms.
Reading Late in the Day feels both prurient—we are so deeply inside the emotional rhythms of this home—and marvelous, in its elevation of a boring middle-class marriage into a fable of warring identities ... Late in the Day joins a tradition of literature about women who, later in life, realize that they have trapped themselves in bourgeois prisons of their own making, and break free ... no style of living is compulsory, Tessa Hadley teaches. There is always a choice, even when somebody else chooses for you. For any reader interested in the relationship between romantic love and the creative life, Late in the Day unfurls into a tale both cautionary and motivating. The novel’s end is its heroine’s beginning; the sequel is there to be lived.
... the two daughters have their own anguish to deal with, all pricked out by Ms. Hadley with her characteristic acuity. Still, something is badly missing. Ms. Hadley’s evocation of mood and ability to describe an ever-changing kaleidoscope of feeling are as adept as they ever were, but where is the humor? Where is the undercurrent of gentle but astringent irony that has been so winningly present in most of her previous work ... Late in the Day offers only a ruminative unfolding of emotion, all acutely observed and recorded at ground level, unaerated by irony or even the mildest comedy. It leaves the novel flat, and when Christine finally unlocks her studio door and leaves us behind, we too are more than ready to move on.
[Hadley's] particular strength is to combine a deep excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects. Late in the Day, her seventh novel, is no exception ... Hadley presents every member of her quartet in bright primary colours ... All the scenes are adroitly handled, as one would expect: action and description are well balanced, and the materials of the book (the food, the drink, clothes, the hair, the urban landscape) are all deployed with a convincing sense of solidity ... In the fifth of the seven sections, things perk up with a betrayal that sparks a new energy, allowing the remainder of the book to move more quickly, become rather less hearty in tone, and engage more nimbly with matters both outside and within the world of domestic intrigue.
Late in the Day is another quiet triumph ... If you have yet to sample Hadley’s intimate dissections of the emotional lives of the British educated middle classes, then Late in the Day is a good place to start ... Hadley is the real deal.
... sumptuous ... Several months pass between the opening chapter of Late in the Day and its close — not even half an orbit of the sun — but its changes are so multifold and profound that the reader emerges from the novel’s pages as restless and purposeful as the characters contained within them ... Hadley’s acute consideration of domestic drama and its sober richness has something in common with Margaret Drabble’s early novels...
British writer Tessa Hadley... covers [abrupt change in one's middle age] with freshness, subtlety and a deep, shifting empathy in her new novel, Late in the Day. Her prose has the penetrating quality of Henry James at his most accessible (Hadley has written a book-length study of James) and is alert, as Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen were, to how time sculpts, warps or casually destroys us ... The novel itself is beautifully contoured ... [Hadley's] complex shading, that illuminating ambiguity, makes Late in the Day a quiet triumph.
Hadley...brings readers into the world of a complicated quartet of friends and lovers ... Hadley traces the friends’ relationships through the decades, not only revealing the evolution of their friendships and romances but also the rise and fall of their youthful ambitions and artistic passions. A layered and compelling read.
This well-drawn and absorbing character study bears all the hallmarks of Hadley’s best work: It’s perceptive, intelligent and written with astonishing emotional depth ... A master of interpersonal dynamics, Hadley captures the complexity of loss, grief and friendship with a clarity of vision that brings the natural and material worlds into sharp focus.
... with a mastery equal to that of the most skilled portraitist, Hadley’s own artful literary brushstrokes bring to life a persuasive picture of longstanding marriages and friendships in profound crisis ... With patience and subtlety, Hadley probes at all the most tender spots in the lives of these characters and invites the reader to ponder the fissure caused by Zachary's death ... Hadley’s graceful prose perfectly complements the subdued mood of the story. Like fine wine, this is a novel to be sipped at, not gulped, but in doing so it's hard to resist the temptation to race ahead to find out what happens to these flawed but deeply sympathetic characters.
... [a] dependably absorbing domestic novel ... Hadley brings her increasingly fine-tuned emotional acuity to Late in the Day ... Unraveling the tangled web of this foursome’s relationships requires a lot of jumping around in time and much – sometimes too much – exposition to fill in background ... The relationship between the surviving trio devolves at times into soapy melodrama, but Hadley is after some weightier issues...
Tessa Hadley’s compelling new novel, Late in the Day, is a subtle, delicate evocation of modern life ... As ever, Hadley's writing is precise yet mysterious ... a nuanced and supple account of how far-reaching historical events affect us all.
... quietly riveting ... A four-person character study—here as always, Hadley is a master of interpersonal dynamics—the novel captures the complexity of loss. Their grief is not only for Zachary; it is for the lives they thought they knew. Restrained and tender.
Hadley’s perceptive, finely wrought novel...traces the impact of the death of one man on three others ... Hadley is a writer of the first order, and this novel gives her the opportunity to explore, with profound incisiveness and depth, the inevitable changes inherent to long-lasting marriages.
