"Exquisite." --Minneapolis Star Tribune - "Brilliantly
observed." -- People, Pick of the Week
"A beguiling novel, deceptively easy to read; beneath the surface swim
disturbing and age-old questions about freedom and fate." -- Hilary
Mantel
From the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes
a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual
awakening in 1960s London.
1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the
suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of
conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to
Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their
children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy.
But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a
visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden
after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world,
Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and
a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it
turns out, as the family's upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation
of the society around them.
With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters' inner
worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free
Love is an irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom
and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our selves - a
novel that showcases Hadley's unrivaled ability to "put on paper a
consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands
your own" (Lily King, author of Euphoria).
