I’ve enjoyed several of Tessa Hadley’s books, and this is her best yet. It’s 1967, and Phyllis Fischer is a bored hausfrau in the depths of Middle England, married to decent but dull-seeming Roger, a “respected and subtle Arabist” with the Foreign Office, and mother to schoolboy Hugh and the adolescent Colette, who has a pash on her English teacher.
Nicholas Knight, the son of a family friend, is coming to dinner, which no one seems particularly enthusiastic about. But Phyllis, “used to communicating with men through these light sexual touches, as much as through her chatter,” touches Nicky briefly on the shoulder with fingers cold from the ice bucket, and a touch paper is lit. They kiss in a neighbour’s garden, then in Phyllis and Roger’s bathroom, and before we know it Phyliss has hot-footed it to London to shack up with her paramour, abandoning husband, children and home.
From our vantage point in the twenty-first century, we know that the sexual revolution was a far better deal for men than for the women they bedded so freely. But Tessa Hadley, while deftly portraying a swinging London in all its swank and squalor – a time when Ladbroke Grove was distinctly infra dig – refuses to make victims of any of the women and girls in this novel. All of them have agency – Phyllis, entirely aware of the immaturity and shortcomings of her new lover, Colette, who visits her mother regularly and successfully negotiates her O levels, despite a period of truancy, Jean, Nicky’s mother, who is linked to Phyllis in a way that she couldn’t have imagined, even Colette’s schoolfriend Susan, who after a wild night on the town with Colette, vanishes in West London.
Free Love is a brilliant evocation of a time and place, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn in from the very beginning. The characters were all extremely interesting. Phyllis was very brave to leave her ordinary comfortable life as wife and mother. A compelling story of love and finding self worth and happiness. A tremendously good read.

In well-heeled late-60s suburbia, Nicholas, the son of a family friend, comes to dinner with the Fischers. A kiss in the dark leads to more than anyone bargained for.

Free Love accurately conveys many period details, attitudes and the clash between youth and the British Establishment.

Hadley’s writing style is clean, precise and adept at zooming in on a character’s motivation. Despite the psychological insight, the characterisation lacks freshness – everything unfolds exactly as expected. As a result, the reading fell flat for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Vintage Limited for the ARC.

It’s 1967, and Phyllis Fischer, a respectable middle-aged woman with a civil servant husband, Roger, and two fairly ordinary teenage children, Hugh and Colette, is about to get caught up in the social and sexual revolution courtesy of a relationship with a young man, Nicholas Knight, who comes for dinner.

Nicholas is there because his mother is an old family friend, possibly a bit more than that, so everybody is going through the polite motions but a few plot twists of the kind that might happen in any middle-class household – plus a little wine – leaves Phyllis snogging Nicholas in the next neighbours garden and gagging for more!

In the coming weeks, the relationship takes off and the rest of the book goes a bit hippie with revolution in the air, drug taking, artists, poets, squats and so on as Phyllis pursues a different identity and moves to London to be with Nicholas.

I like the way that Phyllis falls into the arms of Nicholas with their different expectations and it’s all a nicely developed and tracked surprise, but the ‘Swinging Sixties’ background in London is a little bit less convincing and the way Phyllis handles her children doesn’t seem entirely authentic either. Anyway, we have to believe that she has overriding needs!

There are lots more complications before the story gets resolved and some are more likely than others. I felt a bit sorry for Hugh who seemed to be packed off to boarding school to keep him at arm’s length from the story but Roger turns out to be a good sort.

It’s a neat story and well crafted. Tessa Hadley’s descriptions are sharp but I struggled with the picture of London and hippie life. However, as a raunchy bit of escapism I can see it being popular with older readers who might think they just missed out at the time!

It’s 1967 and we are in the leafy suburbs in the home of the Fischers where Free Love, Protest and rejecting the’Old Guard’ has not yet showed up in any way shape or form. Roger Fischer works at the Foreign Office, wife Phyllis is a typical 50’s/60’s housewife and they have two children Colette, a teenager due to take her O Levels and 9 year old Hugh. All is well until the son of old friends of Roger’s comes to dinner and Nicholas Knight ruffles the conventionality and how! Phyllis makes a choice and it’s a daring one. Brave, mad or foolhardy? Your point of view would depend on how closely you are associated with the fallout.

There is much to like in this latest novel by Tessa Hadley. First of all, it is without doubt extremely well written and I do engage with the story although I don’t think there’s anything especially new here. For instance, although Nikki is intriguing in his youthful views you would expect him to reject the establishment that Roger represents. The characterisation is very good and I especially like Colette who brings her own brand of reality to the situation and Hugh initially is great fun although this definitely changes. Phyllis throws herself wholeheartedly into the sexual revolution and you can’t decide if you admire her or not! There is some good dialogue, at the start there is an entertaining dingdong between Nikki and Colette but be warned some dialogue will make you wince! It’s excellent in the historical context, the ideas and beliefs of the time, the “old‘ are expressed through Roger in particular and the ‘new’ via the newly branded Phyllis and Colette. There’s a good plot twister at the end that you definitely don’t see coming!

However, despite the many positives it does feel a bit predictable in the main plot thread in what occurs between flirty older woman and a much younger man. In places it’s a bit long winded and overdetailed which gets in the way of the progress you want to follow with the Fischer family and Nicky.

Overall though it’s a well written book and I really enjoy the 1960s setting.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House U.K., Vintage, Jonathan Cape for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

I found this to be totally absorbing and read it through without a break. The setting in time is perfectly captured and the characters have real depth. I loved reading the details of life in bohemian London contrasted with sedate country upper class society. Phyllis moves from one to the other and finds fulfillment in her new life. Her clever daughter struggles against her upbringing and education and tracks her mother down. But there is a twist in the tale and Phyllis' husband may have the last word. The strength of this novel is the depth of detail in the lives of the characters and the pace of the plot never lets up.

Oh I really wanted to like this, but sadly it just fell a bit flat for me
Struggled to keep my attention. Never read a Tessa Hadley book before so not sure if this is the usual style, but the form, particularly with speech for example was so distracting.
Not for me.

A book dealing with a middle-aged housewife who embarks on an affair that completely change her life and the lives of those around her. Well written with great characters it was a really good read.

This is an absorbing read that evokes the atmosphere, feelings and changing direction of women at the end of the 1960s.

I love that the main character is in her 40s and living live as a housewife and mother, seemingly unaware of the massive changes taking place out side her social circle.

When a young man arrives for dinner one evening it throws the whole household into turmoil and acts as a catalyst for change for every family member.

Wonderfully written book, subtle, wide-ranging, sympathetic and engaging, it covers so much ground but also offers immense detail - very satisfying read.

This is my first Hadley novel, a writer I've been meaning to try for some time, so I can't say whether this is characteristic of her fiction: for me, it's competent and efficient but also constructed and a bit clichéd. The writing is clear and precise, detailed and visual - but there's nothing exceptional or personable, it's all smooth, bland and neutral.

The story feels like a familiar one: a 40-ish suburban housewife gets a sexual awakening and abandons bourgeoise comfort for a vaguely anti-establishment lifestyle. Along the way we see the fall-out in her family, and there's a rather laboured revelation that verges on melodrama and which seems rather too neatly formed for my taste.

The setting is 1967 but really this looks back at so many books that question the conventionality of middle-class domestic life, and doesn't really have anything new to say. This feels rather old-fashioned to me both in terms of writing style and content and it's hard to see what the writerly intention is. So not really my thing, I'm afraid, but that's subjective taste rather than a criticism of the book.

This novel is set in the London of 1967 – and opens with a (rather reluctant on both sides) visit to a rather conventional suburban family by a twenty-something year-old son of a family friend – one with an unexpected outcome.

The family is Roger Fisher, an Arabist in the Foreign Office; Phyllis his wife; Collette - a rather over-earnest older daughter with a crush on her English language teacher; and Hugh – an easy going 10 year old in the final flush of boyhood freedom ahead of a likely future at his Father’s boarding school.

The visiting son is Nicky Knight – his parents Peter and Jean friends of Roger via his parents and assisted in Roger’s recuperation after his activities in the war. Nicky is living in London is something of a squat, mainly off his mother’s allowance, and the little he can make working as a left wing journalist.

Rather unintendedly on both sides Phyllis and Nicky exchange a passionate kiss during a rather farcical pond-based hunt for the missing sandal of one of Hugh’s playmates.

The incident awakens something in Phyllis and at her instigation the two begin an (at first) sporadic and covert affair – the book tracing how this turns into first a relationship, then full on cohabitation and finally loves its covertness and how this plays out for Phyllis but also for Roger and Collette in particular. There is also party way through a twist which even the characters admit to be a little unexpectedly coincidental.

This is a very competently written book – there is a strong sense of place and time, the book as far as I can tell being anachronym free, not just in period detail but more strongly in the attitudes and reactions of the characters. The problem with this is that it feels like the book too is very old fashioned and uninvolving with the characters attitudes and life-arcs seeming (precisely because of their accuracy) almost clichéd. Nicky for example is predictable in his denunciation of Roger and his world view - Phyllis in her late discovery of the freedoms of the late sixties (sex, drugs, music and dancing, commune style art and the questioning of accepted authority).

Like Nicky himself I felt like I had paid a visit to rather conventional suburban novel – but without the unexpected outcome.

There is a reason that Tessa Hadley is regarded as one of the best living British writers - she has an incredible way of evoking a time and a place and her characters shine. I loved every page of this brilliant book.

I really enjoyed this book. It was my first by Tessa Hadley and I'll definitely read more. The book is set in 1967 and I think it does evoke the spirit of the times well. It is beautifully observed.
Phyllis is heading towards 40 and is a stay at home mum, married to dull, reliable Robert who works in the Foreign Office. They used to be posted overseas but returned when Phyllis had trouble with pregnancies. They have two children, 15 year Collette and 7 year old Hugh. They live in outer London surburbia in (fictional?) Otterley on the train line but not the Tube. One evening they invite Nick, the son (in his early twenties) of an old friend to dinner as his mother wants him to know some people in London as he has recently moved there to try his hand at writing and journalism. Nick is not looking forward to the dinner and arrives a bit sloshed. Phyllis flirts as she usually does with male guests and so Nick imagines fancying Phyllis as a way to pass the time. When they go in search of a child's lost sandal into next door's overgrown garden Nick drunkenly kisses Phyllis. Phyllis feels the kiss is the most passionate she has ever experienced and it unleashes in her a mad desire and so she pursues Nick into bohemian multicultural London where her staid life becomes untethered.

Tessa Hadley is a writer who deserves to to be better known if this book is anything to go by - it is exceptionally beautifully written has a cast of realistically drawn characters, and a naturally fluid plot that keeps the reader engaged - what more can anyone ask? This is the story of a very ordinary and firmly middle class family in 1960s suburbia. Their lives are turned upside down when Phyllis, the mother falls for a younger man and leaves the family home to find herself - a very 1960s thing to do! Her whole world expands and she begins thinking outside the life that had up until that point, been mapped for her by her upbringing, marriage, motherhood and social status. The book explores themes of freedom and the place of women in society and is brilliantly empathetic in drawing all the characters, from the most buttoned up to the freest of pot smoking artists. For me, it took a little while to get going, but was otherwise a wonderful book.

I really enjoyed this story of Phyllis, a middle aged housewife, who is bored with her dull life in suburbia and embarks on a fling with a much younger man. The transformation of Phyllis from a bored, dull housewife into a strong, modern and independent woman is quite remarkable. This relationship turned her whole family upside down and I was really saddened by the effect that it had on her 2 children, Colette and Hughie, who I felt never really recovered from their mother’s sudden abandonment.
This book was beautifully written and, even though I felt all the way through that this tale was never going to end well for all concerned, it was really enjoyable and I found myself racing through it. There are a few twists and turns along the way which drew me further in.
Thanks to the publishers and to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read it in return for my honest review.

Tessa Hadley is a wonderful novelist and this, in my opinion, is her best work so far. Phylis is a middle aged (40) housewife stuck in dreary 1960’s suburbia. Married with two children she unexpectedly meets and falls for a friend’s son. Like a slow motion collapse of a large building we watch how this infatuation affects all generations. The writing is beautiful. The settings pitch perfect. The details are spine tingling. In an autumn of really wonderful books, this one occupies a top spot. Couldn’t recommend more highly.

The title recalls the heady days of the Summer of Free Love, Woodstock, the Swinging Sixties, anti-war demonstrations - and the whole sex ,drugs and rock & roll era - when it was said that if you remembered it, you weren’t really there. Hadley has brilliantly portrayed the atmosphere of that time, although her protagonist is not the expected teenage rebel against authority, but a middle-aged woman trying to regain her lost youth with an unsuitable liaison. It is a modern take on the Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary tragedies, which we know will end in tears, but Hadley has sensibly avoided the easy moralising aspect to keep the reader’s empathy with her flawed characters. Highly enjoyable!

This is not a book I would normally read but was given the opportunity from the publisher due to reviewing another of their novels so I thought, why not? Shouldn't we all step out of our comfort zone once in a while.

I have to say that for something I did not have great expectations for, I really enjoyed this novel.

Phyllis is married to Roger, a fairly nice but boring civil servant however is sexually (re-)awakened with the re-introduction of the son of her friends. Much against her public character she embarks upon an illicit affair with him.

Tessa Hadley is clearly a great novelist and the pacing of the story and depth of characters is excellent. Definitely a recommended read.

Thanks to Random House UK, Vintage, Jonathan Cape and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.



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