Tessa Hadley's “Married Love”

Tessa Hadley was born in Bristol and studied English Literature at Cambridge. She now teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University College and lives in Cardiff. Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Her special interests in English are the novelists, particularly Jane Austen and Henry James, and also early twentieth century writers including Elizabeth Bowen. She has had stories published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Guardian, and has had two plays broadcasted on a British radio station, the latest in autumn 2006.

In her latest New Yorker fiction, Hadley writes about Lottie, a nineteen year-old misfit in a liberal British family who escapes her household by marrying her forty-five year-old, already married music teacher. Though no one believes the marriage will last, time passes and the odd couple has children. However, burdened by the tasks of motherhood, Lottie is forced to forgo her dream of becoming a violist, and consequently, is left longing for more out of life.

I personally enjoyed reading Married Love because it portrayed the quiet desperation of family life while maintaining a comical element. The narrator is companionable and astute, wanting to tell you about the important things about ordinary life.

Moreover, Hadley is a detail-oriented writer who precisely depicts the everyday life of a typical liberal British family. Her observations of women’s aspirations and simultaneous confusion are spot-on, as she chronicles Lottie’s life from a frustrated, yet confident teenager into a cynical, fatigued adult. Hadley's sentences are also beautifully weighted and controlled. With sentences that range from simple and matter-of-fact – “Lottie announced that she was getting married” – to romantically deep – “She had a gift of vehemence, the occasional lightening flash of vision so strong that it revealed to others, for a moment, the world as it was from her perspective”, Hadley proves that she knows how to tell a good story. Overall, her keen prose and flawed characters make Married Love a compelling piece. It is not doubt that Hadley’s ability to “pull real life into writing” won her the Guardian First Book Award.