After The Funeral

The bestselling author of Free Love mines questions of responsibility and freedom and the enduring conflict between power and desire in this captivating and resonant collection of short stories.

In each of the twelve stories in After the Funeral, small events have huge consequences.

Heloise's father died in a car crash when she was a little girl; at a dinner party in her forties, she meets someone connected to that long-ago tragedy.

Two estranged sisters cross paths at a posh hotel and pretend not to recognise each other.

Janey's bohemian mother plans to marry a man close to Janey's own age - everything changes when an accident interrupts the wedding party.

A daughter caring for her elderly mother during the pandemic becomes obsessed with the woman next door; in the wake of his best friend's death, a man must reassess his affair with the friend's wife.

Teenager Cecilia wakes one morning on vacation with her parents in Florence and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes.

As psychologically astute as they are emotionally rich, these stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality and dreams.

A vital addition to Tessa Hadley's celebrated body of work.