The Master Bedroom - Tapa dura

"An elegant, perceptive novel, shot through with deliciously dry wit."--Zoe Heller, author of "Notes on a Scandal""" "A lovely, subtly teasing writer...Hadley's observations of the ebb and flow of female desire and frustration are reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, but she taps sensual undercurrents where Woolf wouldn't have dipped her toe."--Liesl Schillinger, "The New York Times Book Review" "Elegantly observed...Hadley's smart, often prickly characters remind us that love is never simple, and happiness rarely wins without sorrow."--Emily Chenoweth, "People "(four stars) "Lands squarely in the sweet spot where popular fiction and highbrow literature meet...Hadley's writing is outright gorgeous, without a misstep or false note."--Natalie Danford, "Newsday" "Exposes the volatility behind buttoned-up family life with wince-inducing clarity...Hadley proves to be an extremely droll writer, one who can dole out acidic observations worthy of British authors such as Rachel Cusk."--Nita Rao, "Time Out New York" "Hadley has a knack for portraying the dysfunctional, often stagnant lives of the infuriatingly repressed."--Alexis Burling, "The Washington Post" (MediaMix) "Tessa Hadley's third novel is her most ambitious and successful to date...Hadley has a talent for endowing each of her characters with an especially robust point of view."--Andrea Walker, "Bookforum""" "Melancholy and starkly emotive, Hadley's enervating tale evokes the raw drama that lies at the emotional nexus between friends and lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children."--Carol Haggas, "Booklist" "Dreamy and thoughtful."--"Publishers Weekly"

Kate Flynn has always been a clever girl, brought up to believe in herself as something special. Now Kate's forty-three and has given up her university career in London to come home and look after her mother in Firenze, their big house by a lake in Cardiff. When Kate meets David Roberts, a friend from the old days, she begins to obsess about him: she knows it's because she's bored and hasn't got anything else to do, but she can't stop. David is married, rational, dependable: the last type to want an affair.

David's marriage isn't as solid as it looks, though. His wife Suzie has moved out of their bedroom, she avoids talking to David or spending time at home with him and their children, she has made new friends who smoke dope and believe in fortune telling. David takes refuge in Firenze, where he can
talk to Kate about music.

David's seventeen-year-old son Jamie is also drawn to the old house full of books and history. He is more like Kate than his father is, bookish and clever: he wants to find out all about life from her. He turns up one night at Firenze, drunk and desperate.

Tessa Hadley's intricate, graceful novel explores the tangled web of connections between parents and children, lovers and friends; the past casts its long shadows in the present; men and women who were once confident they knew themselves, learn to attend to the changes unfolding inside them.