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Sunday Times bestseller Tessa Hadley explores the big consequences of small events in this new collection

‘Tessa Hadley is my favourite author’ KATE ATKINSON

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. 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 holiday with her parents in Florence and sees them for the first time through disenchanted eyes.

These twelve stories plumb the depths of everyday life to reveal the shifting tides and hidden undercurrents of ordinary relationships.

‘Few writers give me such consistent pleasure’ ZADIE SMITH

‘Hadley is fantastically inventive . . . A magnificent collection’ Daily Telegraph

‘Wonderful . . . The quality of suspense and satisfaction in Hadley’s stories is miraculous’ Vogue, Books of the Year

Publisher Review

Consistently pulls you in from the first sentence… The capacity to make readers care from the off about what happens to these imaginary people next is an unquantifiable, indefinable talent that cannot be taught. You’ve got it or you haven’t. Hadley’s got it * Financial Times * One of our finest novelists and a short story supremo… It is hard to imagine stories more skilfully paced and polished than these * Observer * After the Funeral is a brilliant collection. From the virtuosity of Hadley’s technique to the clarity of her moral vision and the warmth of her humour, what she has achieved in After the Funeral is nothing short of masterful. Her stories are surprising, profound, and each feels as full as a world — Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans Beautifully done… The strongest stories resonate, offering glimpses of the hidden selves we all conceal * Sunday Times * She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare… One of the best fiction writers writing today — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah