Bad Dreams and Other Stories
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
The dazzling collection of stories from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love and Late in the Day.
**WINNER OF THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE**
Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance and a new baby. A housekeeper caring for a helpless old man uncovers secrets from his past. A young girl accepts a lift in a car with a group of strangers. An old friend brings bad news to a dinner party.
In these gripping and unsettling stories, the ordinary is made extraordinary and the real things that happen to people turn out to be every bit as mysterious as their dreams.
'These well-turned, exceptionally nuanced pieces are solidly evocative of place, period...and sensory detail' Sunday Times
'Few writers give me such consistent pleasure' Zadie Smith
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Young women and girls take the measure of themselves in Hadley's remarkably precise and perceptive collection of short stories, set in the middle-class Britain of the 1950s and '60s and in the present day. Chance encounters disrupt the punctiliously observed rituals of daily life, often leading to a lifetime of consequence for Hadley's characters. In the excellent "An Abduction," Jane Allsop's first sexual experience, at 15, is not traumatic in any ordinary sense, but affects her deeply whereas the Oxford student she sleeps with retains no memory of it. In "Experience," Laura, a new divorc e, finds that "letting go of the strain of yearning" is "a relief," moving on with her life precisely because her attempt at seduction is unsuccessful. In loving families, too, differing viewpoints can lead to resentment and misunderstanding: "Her Share of Sorrow" is the account of an artist the awkward 10-year-old daughter of an elegant couple discovering her vocation in writing; in "Bad Dreams," a bookish girl plays a prank that may have lasting repercussions for her parents' marriage. And the young designer making a wedding dress for a classmate in "Silk Brocade" becomes witness to the impact of time and happenstance on even the richest and most beautiful material. In subtly insightful and observant prose, Hadley writes brilliantly of the words and gestures that pass unnoticed "in the intensity of present" but echo without cease.
