Review of The Past by Tessa Hadley

On the good news front, I enthusiastically read and finished The Past by Tessa Hadley. It has been quite a while since I was able to get into a zone while reading. And oddly, I think that in any other year I would have complained that this book did not have enough plot to carry it along. But somehow this story of a British extended family gathering at their crumbling summer home hit the spot for me at a time when no other book has been able to satisfy me.

I do like books where siblings or old friends reunite after a time away, and I also like books about secrets (as long as the secrets aren’t too terrible). In this story, four adult siblings, a few children, and a couple of “outsiders” converge at the old family summer estate to decide whether to sell it. While there, they find that they are forever impacted by their past and yet transitioning beyond it. And beneath this family’s story, there is a larger commentary on the way that Britain itself is changing (via immigration, urbanization, etc.).

This is what I pictured. It was featured in an article about dirt-cheap "doer-uppers" in Britain.

I really enjoyed these characters, and I enjoyed the author’s easy prose. Mostly, I appreciated being able to sink into another world after so many weeks of ennui. It didn’t hurt that I had a nice, long weekend away from the tension and traffic of my everyday life. This was the view from my vacation deck, where I spent several hours with my book and a gin and tonic:

For the first time in a long while, I feel optimistic about my reading life.