Description

The fifth novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love, The Past and Late in the Day, Clever Girl is a tale of an ordinary life made extraordinary by the gifts of Tessa Hadley.

Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so.

Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously, smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. When she meets Val, he seems to her to embody everything she longs for – glamour, ideas, excitement and the thrill of the unknown. But these things come at a price and one that Stella despite all her cleverness doesn’t realise until it is too late.

‘Tessa Hadley writes like a dream’ Daily Mail

Publisher Review

"Few writers give me such consistent pleasure" -- Zadie Smith "She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today" -- Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie "As discrete entities, Hadley's short stories are intense, miniature novels in themselves; bound together in a novel, they become quietly brilliant, offering an incisive exploration into how life's individuals episodes add up to a meaningful whole." -- Francesca Angelini * Sunday Times * "Hadley is a writer of exceptional intelligence and skill and, for all the apparent conventionality of her vision, hers is a subtly subversive talent." -- Edmund Gordon * Observer * "There is something reassuring yet deliciously unexpected about a Tessa Hadley novel." -- Helen Brown * Daily Telegraph *