Shaping the present, the past is never truly gone
Author takes a masterful look at the modern family and its complications with her latest novel
The past is always present — always influencing today’s events, our perceptions and our relationships. In Tessa Hadley’s new novel The Past, what happened decades ago in a British family is still there, shining its light on and shaping events of the present.
The Past is a family novel. It’s about three adult sisters and their brother who gather at their grandparents’ old country house for a family vacation, stretching over three weeks. Alice loves the house and wants to keep it in the family forever, but the others think it might be time to sell it.
Roland, the brother, has been married three times. This time around he brings Pilar, his third wife, to meet the family. She’s Argentine, exotic, strong and beautiful. The sisters really aren’t sure about her.
Fran is the youngest and she brings her two children: Ivy, a tempestuous child who is prone to meltdowns, and Arthur, her calmer younger brother. Harriet is the oldest daughter, the one who looked after the family at 17 when their mother died and their father was consumed by alcoholism.
Kasim, 20, is the son of Alice’s boyfriend, and Molly, 16, is Roland’s daughter from his first marriage. Kasim and Molly start flirting, the siblings start squabbling and love, or lust, pops up in the most surprising places.
This is a family with baggage, and quite literally, a past. The characters are all well-meaning, but complicated and complex individuals.
Although nothing much happens in this novel, there is plenty of action inside the characters’ minds and in their interactions within the walls of the cottage.
Hadley is the author of five previous novels, including Accidents in the Home, which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. She also wrote Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train and Clever Girl, and two collections of stories, Sunstroke and Married Love. She lives in London and is a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.
Hadley draws these characters in The Past so accurately that the reader is carried along in the mini-dramas of their domestic lives.
Ivy, particularly, is a conundrum. At one point, she reads her aunt’s diary and colours all over it with lipstick. You might think this is the innocent prank of a seven-year-old girl, that is, until you realize she writes her brother’s name on it and intentionally mis-spells the f-word to falsely implicate him even further.
But Ivy is not just naughty. She’s wrestling with her knowledge of a dead dog rotting in a nearby abandoned cottage, alongside stacks of pornographic magazines that intrigue her.
Ivy hasn’t told anyone other than her younger brother about her secret findings, but keeping the knowledge to herself is making her do funny things.
The same is true of the adults. They do funny things, particularly to each other as siblings do, and then regret them almost immediately. Alice is a bit like Ivy — apparently oblivious to how her actions affect the people around her. Perhaps apparently is the key word there. Are we ever truly oblivious?
Hadley has done a masterful turn with The Past. It’s an intriguing look at a modern family and how what’s happened in the past continues to be felt as time goes on.
Hadley draws these characters in The Past so accurately that the reader is carried along in the mini-dramas of their domestic lives.