Clever Girl
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:6th Mar '14
£9.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
One woman's life, from childhood to middle age, by Britain's most acute, perceptive novelist of ordinary lives
Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so. Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously, smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. But these things come at a price and one that Stella despite all her cleverness doesn’t realise until it is too late.
The fifth novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Free Love, The Past and Late in the Day, Clever Girl is a tale of an ordinary life made extraordinary by the gifts of Tessa Hadley.
Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so.
Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously, smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. When she meets Val, he seems to her to embody everything she longs for - glamour, ideas, excitement and the thrill of the unknown. But these things come at a price and one that Stella despite all her cleverness doesn't realise until it is too late.
'Tessa Hadley writes like a dream' Daily Mail
Few writers give me such consistent pleasure -- Zadie Smith
She has such great psychological insights into human beings, which is rare. She is one of the best fiction writers writing today -- Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
As discrete entities, Hadley’s short stories are intense, miniature novels in themselves; bound together in a novel, they become quietly brilliant, offering an incisive exploration into how life’s individuals episodes add up to a meaningful whole. -- Francesca Angelini * Sunday Times *
Hadley is a writer of exceptional intelligence and skill and, for all the apparent conventionality of her vision, hers is a subtly subversive talent. -- Edmund Gordon * Observer *
There is something reassuring yet deliciously unexpected about a Tessa Hadley novel. -- Helen Brown * Daily Telegraph *
- Short-listed for Wales Book of the Year 2014 (UK)
ISBN: 9780099570523
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 21mm
Weight: 245g
352 pages