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Title: Bad Dreams and Other Stories
Author: Tessa Hadley
Narrator: Emma Gregory
Format: Unabridged
Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
Language: English
Release date: 01-26-17
Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Publisher's Summary:
In these short stories, it's the ordinary things that turn out to be most extraordinary. Two sisters quarrel over an inheritance; a child awake in the night explores her home; a housekeeper caring for an elderly man uncovers secrets from his past. The stories focus in on crucial moments of transition. Small acts have large consequences, and some of them reverberate across decades. The real things that happen to people and the accidents that befall them are every bit as mysterious as their longings and their dreams.
Critic Reviews:
"Tessa Hadley has become one of this country's great contemporary novelists...possessed of a psychological subtlety reminiscent of Henry James, and an ironic beadiness worthy of Jane Austen."(Guardian)
"Few writers give me such consistent pleasure." (Zadie Smith)
Members Reviews:
Five Stars
My favorite writer
So much loveliness but also much sorrow and regret
âJane Allsop was abducted when she was fifteen, and nobody noticed.â This startling and compelling line begins âAn Abduction,â the first story in Tessa Hadleyâs fantastic short story collection, BAD DREAMS AND OTHER STORIES.
Jane, living in Surrey, England, in the 1960s, is lonely on summer break from boarding school but also both apathetic and fast approaching womanhood. Feeling misunderstood and unappreciated by her family, she finds herself standing, tears in her eyes, as a car of three boys drive past her house in a three-seat convertible. The quartet goes to the home of one of the boys, Nigel, where they begin an afternoon and evening of drinking and sensual exploration. Jane returns home early the next morning both changed and more fully herself. She is typical of Hadleyâs characters: emotionally isolated, thoughtful, observant, and on the cusp of realization and even transformation.
The stories in BAD DREAMS are so precisely worded and the charactersâ interior lives so finely presented, making them such a pleasure to read. The revelations are always careful and mostly partial. Hadley is less interested in resolution and more focused on capturing and describing moments both quiet and pivotal. She has a deep compassion for her characters yet allows readers more than a glimpse at their flaws.
In âOne Saturday Morning,â 10-year-old Carrie finds herself alone at home while her parents run errands. She is saved from the boredom of practicing piano by the unexpected arrival of Dom Smith, a friend of her parents. The evening unfolds with the news of the death of Domâs wife and Carrieâs voyeuristic view into the world of the adults at a party. Her realization that she may have seen something âheadlong and reckless and sweet, unavailable to childrenâ means that she is moving away from childhood.
âFlightâ is about the visit of a narcissistic woman to her mostly estranged family under the pretense of meeting her nieceâs newborn son. As much as readers may want to believe in Claireâs good intentions, she proves frustratingly selfish and clueless throughout the story.