Uplifting, love-filled slice of brilliance *****

Delightful!

Books by Cathy Bramley are brilliantly life affirming

Full of joy and fun

Cathy Bramley serves up the perfect concoction of charm and escapism

Cathy has done it again … A Match Made in Devon is wonderful, warm, wise and witty and made me cry and laugh. I loved it!

I loved this book, and I want Nina to be my new best friend! She is brilliant.

Tessa Hadley’s short stories, Bad Dreams, are simple and artful and leave you wanting more.

It is exquisite, haunting… This is writing of great nuance and psychological acuity… It combines acerbic social observation and wry humour with moments of breathtaking delicacy and tenderness.

The ordinary becomes extraordinary in these masterly short stories by one of the most brilliant and under-read writers of our time.

Hadley has an anthropological gift; she notices the small, regular gestures and responses of the everyday, and demonstrates their enormous impact on our perception of the world, and thus, every relationship we have.

The absorbing nature of Hadley’s novels is demonstrated… through her ability to capture the intricate details of domestic life and make them interesting… The sense of nostalgia she creates and the wonderfully descriptive storytelling compel you to finish each story.

This is a delightful introduction to the absorbing writing of Tessa Hadley and her ability to make domestic life interesting.

Full of… subtle, wise, finely grained observations.

It is the quiet, reflective moments that make Tessa Hadley’s stories so poignant and insightful… there is a psychological heft to her observations.

Hadley’s writing is direct and a pleasure to read, and she has an uncanny ability to capture the intricate details of everyday life.

A new collection… demonstrates once again Hadley’s unerring craft… Hadley’s agile sentences never seek to dazzle, yet showcase her unerring craft nonetheless.

The women in these marvelous stories share quiet lives, complex feelings and, above all, secrets – some that can do real damage… Every situation captivates; every carefully chosen word rings true.

Hadley at her witty best.

Tessa Hadley is one of the most sympathetic, insightful observers of human nature writing today.

Tessa Hadley is an acute observer of everyday dramas that have a sinister undercurrent of destruction. Although these tales are thoroughly middle-class, there is nothing cosy about Hadley’s worlds.

A collection showing all her trademark qualities of pin-sharp observation and arresting expression.

Spare, slightly chilly… Most of these 10 stories deliver cool shocks, but all are buoyed by an undercurrent of wry humour and pleasingly mellow irony.

The stories in Tessa Hadley’s Bad Dreams…quivered with similar suppressed emotion, whether about grown-up sisters silently feuding, or a neglected schoolgirl whose longing for “life” sees her fall in with a bunch of predatory university students.

A novelist at the top of her game.

Brilliant evocations of female frustration… The disappointments and misunderstandings cut deep. Hadley evokes time, place and emotion superbly well; she’s a great storyteller.

Superb.

She deserves all the prizes. Hadley is psychologically acute, drily witty and absolutely wonderful on place. Her relative obscurity, then, is an unfathomable mystery . . . The female characters at the heart of her novels – clever, impulsive, not always wholly likable – are so finely drawn, I can never get them out of my head

[A] masterclass in writing about the edges of everyday life. This collection of short stories that all link to the Sunshine State captures loneliness, alienation, abandonment and inner resourcefulness in the most creative of tales.

Fantastical tales ... You'll be swept up in a wild hurricane of a ride with this lyrical stories of fury and love, loss and hope.

Each story is perfectly formed, exquisite, often troubling but there is something so brilliantly humane about her work.

The five darkly comic stories that comprise The Largesse of the Sea Maiden are befitting final testaments to [Johnson’s] wild originality... His sentences, like his plots, are full of gorgeous little shocks.