The Party by Tessa Hadley

An irresistible novella about two sisters and a night that changes everything, from the master chronicler of our heart’s hidden desires. ‘Tessa Hadley is my favourite author’ KATE ATKINSON Evelyn had the surprising thought that bodies were sometimes wiser than the people inside them. She’d have liked to impress somebody with this idea, but couldn’t explain it.

On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students’ party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn’s misgivings. As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives.

‘Few writers give me such consistent pleasure’ ZADIE SMITH‘Hadley’s extraordinary skill [is] making both surface life and deep interiors come fully alive’ COLM TÓIBÍN‘Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book’ HILARY MANTEL