Married Love

First, I must admit that I never read short stories. I’d rather become engrossed in a longer novel than have to settle into a new set of characters and a new setting every few pages. But Tessa Hadley’s Married Love has changed my opinion. In this nuanced, well-observed collection of stories about relationships Hadley shows me that short doesn’t have to mean unsatisfying.

She draws her characters beautifully: the girl who is coming to terms with the suicide of her brother; the young sailor gauche in his dealings with the opposite sex; the woman whose attraction to her date is quashed by a single opinion; the young couple who must negotiate their very different family backgrounds.

In all these stories Hadley has the knack of launching straight in, grabbing the reader’s attention from the off and revealing a great deal in a single sentence. But, conversely, she also holds back; as much as the stories are self-contained, in some cases they could also be the first chapter of a longer story. I was often left wanting to know what happens next.
That is not to the collection’s detriment. But it is nevertheless inevitable that these short stories have left me wanting to read one of Hadley’s full-length works.