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  • Published: 20 January 2022
  • ISBN: 9781473595286
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

Free Love




From Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past, comes a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London

From Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past, comes a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London

1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy.

But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family's upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.

With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters' inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive, irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our lives.

'She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today.' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts.' Hilary Mantel

  • Published: 20 January 2022
  • ISBN: 9781473595286
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is the author of six highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl and The Past, and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams. The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She lives in London and is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and other magazines.

Also by Tessa Hadley

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Praise for Free Love

Honest to god, I utterly LOVED this book!!!!! Tessa Hadley might be my new favourite writer. She just 'gets' people, their flaws, their ignoble impulses, the transcendent moments... she is wonderful.'

Marian Keyes

Free Love is a perfect example of the Tessa Hadley problem: her books are so easy on the eye, such a joy to read, it's possible to forget how artful, profound and subtle they are - and what a great writer she is.

Geoff Dyer

So real and humane and utterly transporting; fresh and yet, with the feeling of a beloved classic.

Meg Mason