I love her writing. No standouts per se but a solid collection. This is one I will think about and recommend.

I missed the mark on this one. I saw that it was categorized as contemporary, and while they may have been written recently, the stories, the language and the setting is old. (I think)
I tried to gauge a time period but I couldn’t, which made it even more confusing.
With children incredulously shouting that a doctors wife can’t work at a supermarket ! makes me feel like we’re in the 50’s. But with her driving a Honda civic and the husband flying 747’s this has to be after the 70’s when these two things first were launched.
Unfortunately I think the heavy British vocabulary is throwing me off here too. I’m sorry I stuck my nose in here where it had no business being.

Thanks, NetGalley and Knoph for the digital review copy.

While the writing was very good, the characters in the stories made me uneasy (which I'm sure was the point and demonstrates the author's skill). Ultimately, I didn't like spending time with them. Just not a good fit for me as a reader.

none of these stories stuck with me. well-written, naturally, but nothing that grasped me. I enjoyed my time reading this and I'm looking forward to the author's next release

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf and NetGalley for an electronic ARC of this novel.

After the Funeral and Other Stories is a well written collection of short stories by Tessa Hadley. This set of unconnected vignettes take place in the UK examines fuzzy recollections and consequences of the past and dealing with loss. Hadley's subtle writing and delicate prose makes you think about your own life. Her engrossing stories resonated with me and I enjoyed them, even though some of them were a little disconcerting.

Tessa Hadley has made a name for herself with a beautifully subtle style and deep insights into what makes relationships strain and sometimes break. Her work is unshowy yet quietly brilliant...

Short story lovers, this could be your lucky day. Here is a wonderful collection by the inimitable Tessa Hadley. She has a knack for taking something quotidian and turning it into something that resonates. All twelve stories are well worth the reader’s time. I especially enjoyed The Bunty Club and The Other One.

Dip in anywhere or read in order. Even if you are not generally a reader of short stories, this one is worth your time.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for this title. All opinions are my own.

Short stories are not my typical read, but when I read the premise of this collection, I was intrigued. After losing three family members over the course of three months, this was the balm my heart needed. The writing is gorgeous, immersive and complex, and her character studies are so astute.

Thank you to Tessa Hadley, Knopf and NetGalley for an advance copy. I look forward to reading more from Hadley.

What an amazing collection of short stories! I couldn’t find one that I did not enjoy or that did not make me wonder about my own life, those around me, and just the state of humanity as a whole. Readers who enjoy the creativity and perspective of Margaret Atwood or the incisiveness of Meg Wolitzer are likely to find Hadley’s After the Funeral and Other Stories equally as well-written, equally as insightful into the human experience. And like Atwood and Wolitzer, there is an undercurrent of the uncomfortable in this collection of Hadley’s work, something that makes one wonder about the moral state of our species.

The stories range wide in terms of their narrators and protagonists. In some stories the narrator is a child, in others adult women, adult men. These are stories that clip a slice of a group of someones lives: some pinpoint a long moment of grief or the sharp cut of a sudden loss. There is death and all the attendant fears of delivering the news of death, of getting on after the loss, of not feeling much of anything and what that means about oneself. There are stories here of indifference, a death of a different kind amongst our very social species. There are stories of disloyalty and infidelity, yet again, another kind of death. Indeed, the title of the collection, while signaling the title of one of its stories, is also telling of the content of the collection. After the Funeral and Other Stories is about what happens after there has been a resignation of some kind, a real or metaphorical death and the putting to bed of that corpse. In some of these tales, there is proof of an afterlife.

The characters in these stories do unexpected things, sometimes things that shouldn’t be done but are done anyway, with and without shame. Readers will find themselves wondering at the end of a story, “Oh, that’s just not right…. is it?” Or, is it? That is the draw of this collection of Hadley’s work.

Story aside, Hadley’s prose should also be an attraction for readers. This is delicious literary fiction; Hadley’s turns of phrase are crisp and succinct; the description of the squelch of plimsoll shoes in the rain is enough to invoke a multitude of elements necessary to the reader’s experience: a sense of activity, the image of the character, the mind of the narrator — and more profound, the poignancy of the moment.

I would normally list my favorite stories, but honestly, I enjoyed each and every one of these.

I enjoyed this, and I don't usually gravitate towards picking up short story collections. It was immersive, and I was impressed with how the author explores the many forms of loss. This book will stick with me for a while.

In my opinion, this book is a master class in how to write a collection of short stories. Tessa Hadley goes seamlessly from story to story leaving a reader, within a paragraph or so, immersed in a brand new character and a slice of another life. It is effortless with no need for switching mental gears for the next story because you are immediately a captive. I loved this book!

4.5⭐

After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley is a remarkable collection of short stories that examines everyday relationships both in their simplicity and in their complexity. Revolving around themes of family, friendship, marriage and relationships, these stories examine human behavior and how one copes with shifting dynamics in close relationships impacting their priorities, self-perception and worldview.

The author writes with insight, compassion and great emotional depth. After the Funeral (4.5) follows nine-year-old Charlotte in the years following her father’s demise wherein she takes it upon herself to hold her family together. In Dido’s Lament (5), a chance meeting between former spouses triggers moments of fond memories, regrets and hidden resentments. After their mother is hospitalized after a fall, three sisters return to their childhood home triggering a cascade of memories in The Bunty Club.(4)

On the day of her mother’s wedding to a much younger man, a surprising series of events reveals a more complicated dynamic between the mother, her husband-to-be and her adult daughter in My Mother’s Wedding (4.5). Funny Little Snake(5) revolves around the complicated relationship between a recently married young woman and her stepdaughter. In Men(4), two estranged sisters, see each for the first time in fifteen years but find that some distances are too hard to traverse.

In Cecilia Awakened(5) a perceptive teenager learns a life lesson when she begins to see her family members and herself as distinct individuals with their own set of flaws and shortcomings vis a vis what they project to the outside world and each other, while on vacation.Old Friends (5) follows an affair between a married woman and her husband’s close friend and how it is impacted by a shocking tragedy. In Children at Chess(5), a middle-aged man is shaken when learns of his older sister’s ill health and impending demise.

A middle-aged woman meets a woman who had a scandalous connection to her late father, dredging up painful memories in The Other One (4). In Mia(4), a young woman meets an affluent, seemingly happy woman on a private catering gig but soon realizes that having everything might not necessarily ensure happiness. Set during the pandemic, a middle-aged woman caring for her elderly mother finds herself drawn to her elderly neighbor’s caregiver in Coda(4).

The stories vary in length, setting and tone. Though the writing is crisp with no excesses, the characters are exceptionally well-fleshed out and the author is diligent in her attention to detail while establishing the setting for each of the stories. Overall, I found this collection to be a through-provoking read that I would not hesitate to recommend to those who enjoy character-driven short stories. This is my first time reading this author and I look forward to exploring more of Tessa Hadley’s work.

Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

There are authors whose writing is completely immersive, and Tessa Hadley turns out to be one of them. In this respect, and in the kind of fiction she writes here—which may be termed domestic horror—she reminds me of Shirley Jackson.

This is a collection of stories about the unsettling mundane, the slightly weird things that trigger an extra heartbeat in the banality of everyday life. It’s an examination of relationships—between sisters, mothers and their children, spouses, and exes. In one of the most striking stories (although they all appealed), a woman unexpectedly bumps into her ex, and when he invites her to come and see how he’s living now, their missed connections and deliberate obfuscation towards each other are revealed to us.

Hadley is astute in her dissection of human connections, and has a really lovely way with words. This was my first foray into her oeuvre, and I look forward to reading much more of her.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Knopf for this ARC.

If you don’t know Tessa Hadley, she’s the multi-award-winning author of three previous story collections and eight novels. This new collection is a great introduction to her work and for those of us already familiar with Hadley, it’s a great addition. Throughout the collection, Hadley spins out character studies of (mostly) women at odds with themselves, their partners, their families, or life in general.

You can read my full review in the July/August issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories. The overarching theme for them all seems to be loneliness and just hiding the truth from themselves or others. The first story ran a little long and was hard to get through but after that Hadley hits their stride. I changed my initial rating of 4 stars to 5 after I posted the full review. I enjoyed so many of the stories, I couldn't rate it less than that. I did not favorite it though since I don't see me re-reading this time and time again.

Full review:

"After the Funeral" (4.5 stars)-A young wife (Marlene) loses her husband and is left to depend on the kindness of a new boss and her brother-in-law while her two daughters, Charlotte and Lulu who are 9 and 7 at the start of the story that are dealing with their lives being turned upside down. The story follows Marlene, her oldest daughter, Charlotte, mainly through the next decade almost where Charlotte realizes a lot of hidden things about her mother. She always finds herself doing whatever is necessary to push her mother and sister towards something that looks like a family. Even if it's stolen. I thought the ending of this was really good, but the first couple of pages of this story took a while to hit their stride. I started to worry that all of the stories would be like this. But after the groove settles in, the story was really good. I felt so badly for Charlotte.

"Dido's Lament" (5 stars)-What would you do if you ran into your ex-husband. Would you be gracious? Try to hide how your life actually is? What if what you see, isn't what you get? I loved the story of Lynette and running into her ex-husband Toby. The story seemed straightforward til Hadley allows us into Toby's inner feelings.

"The Bunty Club" (4 stars)-This story follows three sisters who are facing the unpleasant reality that their mother is ill and likely will not return back to their childhood home. The story follows the youngest sister Serena, and then we jump into the bare bone lives of her older sisters, Pippa and Gillian. I don't know this one seemed to start off promising, but Serena and her storyline just didn't do much for me. The ending hit home though.

"My Mother's Wedding" (5 stars)-Woo boy. This was all kinds of [swear word] up. I loved it though.

"Funny Little Snake" (5 stars)-A young stepmother who is fed up with caring for her husband's child from his first marriage. However, things take a turn when she realizes that she may have to step in where she thought she would not have to. I liked it. It was an odd little story and worked.

"Men" (5 stars)-A woman who works at a hotel finds herself gazing upon her long lost sister. Two women who both told themselves stories about the other, and both missing each other.

"Cecilia Awakened" (5 stars)-A young teenager named Cecilia realizes that her life and her parents are not what they appear to be. I think most of us had that awakening in their teen years. I think what is most painful for Cecilia and her mother, is that they both seemed to think if they could just be beautiful, or something else, that life wouldn't be so hard or scary.

"Old Friends" (5 stars)-An affair that seems to have been with the wrong person. No spoilers. But I did enjoy how this was told and how it ended.

"Children at Chess" (5 stars)-An older man who realizes that his sister, who has always been there in kind of a stationary way, is ill and probably going to die soon. It hits him with a quickness and he's left thinking of their childhood.

"The Other One" (5 stars)-A divorced woman named Heloise who just seems to be stuck. She's stuck on the fact that her father had an affair, got into a car accident, and then died along with his lover when she was 12. But....is everything what it seems there. I loved the layers to this story. This one ran almost as long as the first story in the collection.

"Mia" (4 stars)-This one felt a bit uneven. We follow a young woman named Alison who comes across a woman named Mia, who is everything that she wishes she could be. But then Alison quickly sees that Mia who may be beautiful, may be lacking a lot of things.

After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley is a collection of twelve short stories that touch on death, in several different forms.

The genre of short story collections is usually hit or miss for me. They are a short punch and have to grab me from the start to enjoy. They don't allow for much character development or a long story line, and I have trouble finishing them if they don't catch my attention early. In this collection, about half of the stories spoke to me, and I really enjoyed (if you can "enjoy" a death story) and made me think. A few still hold in my heart and clearly had something to say to me personally. That to me is success as it's a little like 31 flavors, not sure you have to like every single one to enjoy the ice cream shoppe!

Tessa's writing is well done, and she has deep insights into a topic that few truly dare to go on such a real level. This came at a time in my life where I am trying to understand death better, and how we all cope when we personally experience it. I rated three stars just based on the content of a few stories not taking hold for me, but the writing is still excellent.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the short story genre, there are many topics covered in this book. the reader is sure to find many that touch them!

Thank you to NetGalley, Tessa Hadley, and Knopf Publishing Group for an advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own, and I appreciate the opportunity to read.

Do not let the title fool you. These short stories are about life. Each one tells an emotionally charged story in just a few pages. Tessa Hadley aims straight for the reader's heart and mind with a skill sure to hit the target with each story. This book is definitely destined for our book club discussions. I have not read her previous books but I'm sure to read them now. Recommended for those looking for a good book that will cross the fictional genre with a broad swatch of emotions.

“It was like being a teenager, time stretching out voluptuously in all directions.” I could use some time like that right about now! Lots of relatable moments and characters created by Hadley. There were a few super short stories and I enjoyed the opportunity they created to fill out the rest of the details with my own imagination. Out in July. Thank you @netgalley for the ARC.

There are some books that linger in your thoughts long after you've read the last page. After the Funeral and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley is one such book.

After the Funeral and Other Stories is a quiet collection of short stories exploring the many forms of loss that permeate our lives. While many of the featured stories focus on physical death and its impact on those left dealing with the fallout, others are more attuned to the melancholy of lost relationships and missed opportunities. There is an authenticity to the voices that populate this collection making the characters, their observations, and their actions all the more compelling.

Tessa Hadley's writing is vivid, flush with emotion and striking imagery that adds weight to the narratives of the storytellers. Dido's Lament is a particularly haunting tale with a surprisingly effective and intense emotional punch.

Thank you to #Netgalley for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review on #AftertheFuneralandOtherStories.

Pub date: July 10, 2023

Thank you NetGalley for the the free ebook.

As a funeral director, I can guarantee I’m picking up a book like this based completely on the title.

A collection of short stories, this little book explores death and loss in all its forms—the death of the physical body, the death of familial relationships, the death of childhood. Considering death can be such a heavy topic, I enjoyed the short stories because it mitigated the “heaviness.” Like any short story collection there are stories that stand out more than others. However, Hadley’s writing is consistently good.

This collection will be published July 10, 2023

Thank you NetGalley for the free ebook.