Married Love (P.S.) Short Stories by Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley's short story collection puts her in league with masters of this genre; like Alice Munroe & Jhumpa Lahiri.  High praise for this contemporary British author who has been listed for the Guardian 1st Book Award.  She is a teacher of Lit./Creative Writing @ Bath Spa Univ.  Hadley's title of Married Love uses a skeletal framework of marriage to probe how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive the way we are viewed by others inside/outside of our families.  These tautly written stories examine what we are willing to divulge, what facades we establish, and what we discover when through another's perspective.  "She had a gift of vehemence, the occasional lightning flash of vision so strong that it revealed to others, for a moment, the world as it was from her perspective."  In the story about a middle-aged cleaning woman, you feel sympathy for her loss of her only son in Afghanistan.  She realized he was holding back from her while on leave, "Whenever they partned now, he kissed her as if her were putting her aside, kindly but firmly."  This character & others addresses the class system that is still pervasive in England.  The fascination lies in the awareness of diverging lifestyles and the disparities/similarities in possessions and behaviors. A young woman who "married up," admits to being "uncertain how to fit in with this family and their unashamed grand gestures." She advises the new boyfriend in the family, "You should always keep something of yourself back from them.  Keep a few secrets." Hadley's well structured collection of stories are incredibly powerful in their astute observations and parsimonious emotional depictions.  I highly recommend Hadley's Married Love as well as collections by Munroe & Lahiri.