Free Love, Tessa Hadley
Free Love, Tessa Hadley
3 Rating(s)
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Free Love
A Novel

Author: Tessa Hadley

Narrator: Abigail Thaw

Unabridged: 9 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 02/01/2022


Synopsis

“Exquisite."" —Minneapolis Star Tribune • ""Brilliantly observed.” — People, Pick of the Week“A beguiling novel, deceptively easy to read; beneath the surface swim disturbing and age-old questions about freedom and fate.” — Hilary MantelFrom the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes a compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London.1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy.But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters’ inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is an irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our selves – a novel that showcases Hadley’s unrivaled ability to “put on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own” (Lily King, author of Euphoria). 

About Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly acclaimed novels, including Clever Girl and The Past, as well as three short story collections, most recently Bad Dreams and Other Stories, which won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her stories appear regularly in The New Yorker; in 2016 she was awarded the Windham Campbell Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. She lives in London.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ceecee on January 20, 2022

It’s 1967 and we are in the leafy suburbs in the home of the Fischers where Free Love, Protest and rejecting the’Old Guard’ has not yet showed up in any way shape or form. Roger Fischer works at the Foreign Office, wife Phyllis is a typical 50’s/60’s housewife and they have two children Colette, a t......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 07, 2024

Free Love by Tessa Hadley is set in 1967 London and our main character – Phyllis Fischer, appears to be a happily married. She's a mother of two and her husband, Roger, is a decent diligent Government employee. They live in a ‘well-to-do’ area of London and seem to be ‘living the life.’ One evening a......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on July 31, 2024

Towards the end of the swinging sixties, London housewife Phyllis Fischer doesn’t realise she’s unhappy with her lot until the young son of a family friend comes around for dinner one night. Phyllis loves entertaining and but Nicky is something of an awkward guest, arriving late and seeming to have......more

Goodreads review by Ron on February 08, 2022

Tessa Hadley’s new novel, “Free Love,” is smartly situated within the fusion of defiance and regret, liberation and attachment. Along the way, Hadley alludes to Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” but her story cuts its own path. In fact, “Free Love” begins with a d......more

Goodreads review by Claire on March 29, 2022

There are novels by Tessa Hadley which have made my top ten books of the year, but sadly I don't think this is going to be one of them. The writing, as ever, is wonderful. Hadley has such a wonderful way of putting me right in the location she's writing about. The novel starts with the sound of chil......more