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Sunstroke and Other Stories Kindle Edition

by Tessa Hadley (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 160 ratings
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A Picador Paperback Original

Tessa Hadley's stories trace the currents of desire, desperation, and mischief that that lie hidden inside domestic relationships.

A mother hears her son's confession that he's cheating on his girlfriend; a student falls in love with a professor and initiates an affair with a man who looks just like him. A boy on a seaside vacation realizes that a grown-up woman is pressing dangerously close.

In Tessa Hadley's Sunstroke and Other Stories, everyone conspires to hold the loving and stable surface of family life together, as old secrets and new appetites threaten to blow it apart.

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  1. Print length
    200 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Picador
  5. Publication date
    July 24, 2007
  6. File size
    903 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ten elegant stories from Welsh author Hadley (Everything Will Be All Right) explore the various stages of women's experience. The title story, set at a seaside cottage in Wales and told in an austerely omniscient voice, tracks two attractive early-30ish mothers, one married, the other partnered, who each begin a flirtation with a visiting doctor friend. In Mother's Son, the other woman in an adulterous affair that ended 20 years before finds herself ruefully counseling her grown son—the product of the affair—on dealing with his romantic troubles. Each of these beautifully crafted tales (some set in the 1970s) encapsulates a tender, transformative moment for these real characters, such as the provincial vicar's daughter in Buckets of Blood sent up to visit her older sister in Cambridge for the week who finds, to her horror and disappointment, her sister reeling from a miscarriage that puts her, like their worn-out mother, among the ranks of women submerged and knowing amid their biology. In another tale, a man tracks down the now matronly woman who flirted with him when he was a blushing 13-year-old on a seaside holiday with his family 25 years before. Hadley's eerie, knowing portrayals speak to the heart as much as the mind.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Miraculous . . . Deft and resonant, [these stories] encapsulate moments of hope and humiliation in a kind of shorthand of different lives lived. Hadley never fails to surprise."--The New York Times Book Review

"Tessa Hadley's gift as a writer is so considerable that her characters' revelations and predicaments linger in the mind long after her narrative has darted off in other directions."--Alice Traux, The New York Times Book Review

"A warm novel that follows the contours of four generations of a family and, in the end, shows us ourselves."--Associated Press on Everything Will Be All Right

"Marvelously intricate . . . Hadley's intelligence puts her in the company of Carol Shields and Doris Lessing."--The Boston Globe on Accidents in the Home

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0028UBFH2
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; 1st edition (July 24, 2007)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 24, 2007
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 903 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 200 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 160 ratings

About the author

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Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley

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Tessa Hadley is the author of four highly praised novels: Accidents in the Home, which was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award; Everything Will Be All Right; The Master Bedroom; and The London Train, which was a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of two short-story collections, Sunstroke and Married Love, both of which were New York Times Notable Books as well. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker. She lives in London.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
160 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

David R. Anderson
5.0 out of 5 stars Fine stories by a fine writer
Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2011
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One of the pleasures of reading comes when you discover an author new to you whose stories are so good that you can't wait to read all her others. Tessa Hadley is such a writer. Helen Simpson is another. After reading "Sunstroke" I posted requests for Hadley's three novels on my library's internet request desk.

"Sunstroke," the title story, is a gem, as much of a delight, although composed in an entirely different key, as Kevin Barry's splendid story "Breakfast Wine" which is included in his first collection, "There Are Little Kingdoms"). Here in Santa Fe, as summer turns to fall, there is a moment in the late afternoon when the sun backlights a flower in bloom at just the right angle and intensity to show it in the most fulsome way possible. Tessa Hadley has the gift of our late afternoon sun when it comes to revealing her characters' lives unfolding.

In "Sunstroke," Rachel and Jamie, "both in their early thirties, at that piquant moment of change when the outward accidents of flesh are beginning to be sharpened by character and experience" are at the beach in the southeast of England with their children for a day away from their men. "In order to earn this day in the sunshine. . .how many toiling domesticated days haven't these young mothers put in?" And they intend to make the most of it. Because they are friends, best friends, from way back, Rachel and Jamie have long had the habit of "tell[ing] each other everything, almost everything."

While "neither is exactly unhappy . . .what has built up in them instead is a sense of surplus, of life unlived. Somewhere else . . .there must be another world of intense experiences for grown-ups." And, Hadley tells us, they "half know about themselves how visibly they exude their sexual readiness." The next clue as to what lies ahead comes when, over the hubbub created by their swarming children, Rachel tells Jamie of her growing interest in her husband's friend Kieran, who, as luck would have it, will show up later that day. I'll leave it you, dear reader, to discover the denouement.

Primarily a novelist, Hadley has had this to say about writing short stories:
"I love the irresponsibility of short stories. Writing short, you create with a free hand. Each new development you imagine can be drawn in to the story without consequences, with all the lightning-bolt effect of a first thought, no requirement to elaborate a hinterland." And is she ever good at that.

Endnote: Since "Sunstroke and Other Stories" appeared, The New Yorker has published six of Hadley's stories, most recently "Clever Girl" (June 6, 2011), part of a series of interrelated stories about a young girl named Stella. In due course, "Clever Girl" will appear as part of a novel in much the same way that the interrelated stories in "Lives of Girls and Women" by Alice Munro form a novel. Munro's novel, by the way, also tells the story of one girl's growing up.
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Joseph Landes
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Set of British Short Stories
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2013
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I picked up Tessa Hadley's "Sunstroke" after seeing it on the NY Times 2007 Notable Books list. I had already read The London Train and Married Love and enjoyed both of those. In general, I am not a big fan of British writing--save for the Patrick Melrose novels--but I do like Tessa Hadley's writing a lot and this short story collection did not disappoint me. The collection is comprised of 10 stories--each one I would say being quite tightly written. The thing with short stories in my opinion is that if they are good, you want them to go on and on. In most cases I experienced that with these stories. The title story--Sunstroke--was I think the best of the collection and explores the theme of middle aged women who are looking for something different from their husbands and engage in a brief dalliance with an invited guest. I also enjoyed Buckets of Blood a great deal which talks about two fairly provincial sisters one of whom went off to college and got herself into a real mess with an unwanted pregnancy. Finally in Phosphorescence, a man who is not quite molested by pretty close by an older woman when he is a young boy, reunites with her later in life for a brief time. I enjoyed this collection a great deal and recommend it to those who enjoy the short story genre and Tessa Hadley in particular.
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Eric Selby
5.0 out of 5 stars A Portrait Artist: Tessa Hadley
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2009
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For me, characters in these stories are verbal portraits with no sharp edges. Often I find myself disengaged when I read writers from "across the pond." But not so with Tessa Hadley. This is one of those beautifully bound little books that this reader did not want to read straight through. Instead I chose to "do" a story a day. I guess my favorite is "Buckets of Blood," somewhat because that is such a great title. And when I got into the story--one about two sisters from a large minister's family--I began to realize that the ending would be what I predicted. But it wasn't. Handled by another writer, these characters would have been all lumped into the category of "dysfunctional," people one would not have wanted to know were they real. But that is not the case with Ms. Hadley's characters. Yet this reader feels no pity either. Her characters accept life and what it offers in a state of unspoken grace. I highly recommend the book. And the reader will love the actual feel of this book as well, providing evidence that Kindle is not all it's cracked up to be!
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AnandaK
4.0 out of 5 stars Twists and turns
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2013
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By writing that headline, I don't mean to say that Tessa Hadley's stories are mysteries with twists and turns, but they do examine human relationships and the weird ways things can shift in those relationships. And that is what I like about her writing. There is no perfection, or clear-cut good and bad. I feel like her characters are people I've known or maybe they're all part of my character. Things that should be simple do not remain simple. I find her to be one of the best storytellers of human relationships--almost on a par with Alice Munro. I enjoy her short stories. I prefer her novels. I hope she writes more.
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D. P. Birkett
5.0 out of 5 stars Girls don't always have fun
Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2010
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These brilliant stories about family relationships are often set with the primary action in the sixties or seventies in provincial England or Wales and with an aftermath in the 21st century. The tales are told from a female point of view and there is something unsatisfactory about the men in their lives. The women, especially the adolescents are shy, clever, self-denigrating and self-sacrificing. There's no major tragedy but a melancholy tinge. Loves are not consummated but sex leads to regret. Even food is not enjoyed and all the beaches are described with distaste. People seldom have a good time unless they drink too much, smoke pot, or are unperceptive jocks. The humor often comes from puncturing the pomposity of pretentious males or poking sly fun at characters who attempt artistic and literary endeavors that are second-rate.
That all sounds a bit negative but these really are superb entertainments, full of great insight and sharp wit.
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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Easily consumed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 18, 2022
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Each story is a work of art. The characters are like old friends, all different, but very familiar. True short story brilliance.
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Robert Laterveer
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful
Reviewed in France on February 13, 2013
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Beautifully crafted stories by an expert writer. Hadley is adept at so-called "small-scale, domestic" situations, finding an infinity of wonder and nuances in the smallest everyday act. These stories are about family relations, men and women struggling with the balance between their everyday life and their private aspirations. Vividly and movingly (and lovingly) described, in a style that makes you want to linger on the page, and regret that this collection is too short !
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T. Gow
5.0 out of 5 stars these stories flag up so many aspects of the feminine condition - beautiful language, sharp observations and textures you can almost ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 17, 2017
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This collection of short stories was on my university reading list and they have blown me away - I haven't finished reading them all yet but thought I'd review anyway. Rich and atmospheric, these stories flag up so many aspects of the feminine condition - beautiful language, sharp observations and textures you can almost touch. I shall be moving on to Tessa Hadley's novels at the first opportunity.
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Bluebell Hill
5.0 out of 5 stars Really enjoyed these stories
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2020
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Beautiful collection. Characters who are annoying, stricken, hilarious, damaged, and lovable but certainly never boring. I like the narrators’ cool and detached forensic level of observational details. Really enjoyed this.
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A. Whitehead
1.0 out of 5 stars Sunstroke - writing from the 1970s
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 11, 2008
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Sunstroke

This sort of writing should never have made it out of the 1970s.

Tessa Hadley excels, as the Glasgow Herald quote on the back cover says: "in glimpses: those small burning memories ... which haunt as well as remind...".

But that's about it - a couple of good paragraphs of insight per story and the rest is pretty awful and myopic.

Virtually all her characters (really!) are graduate women who have studied Arts, usually English Literature, at university. Two, in separate stories, teach it at degree level. Most are post-feminists struggling to reconcile their past with a slow-dawning realisation that men are not all worthless, and that they still fancy them sometimes. Hadley herself is obviously still struggling: for example she attributes bizarre and inconsistent passions for guns to two of her male characters apparently purely to make the point that men are simple and doltish - unlike complex, peaceful women.

Some of her characters actually do read The Guardian but one cannot imagine any of them ever reading anything else. Two, in two different stories work for Labour MPs. In short Hadley has but one character: a post-feminist, socialist English Lit graduate, which she spins out by featuring them before, during and after university - an experience with which Hadley is clearly obsessed. She appears to takes the advice to writers about concentrating on what you know to risible extremes. A few characters even attend writing courses.

But even if one accepts this awfully narrow slice of society as adequate raw material, the characters themselves are inadequate and unattractive to the point where you simply do not care what happens to them. The men, of course, are laughably repulsive, like Vince in the title story Sunstroke. He is meant to be attractive to women but we are told he is "... lean with wedge-narrow face of a well-bred collie." Well-bred!

and Patrick, the object of desire in The Surrogate, who was "...tall with rather bowed shoulders; he was hollowly thin except for a small beer belly nestled in the stretched cloth of his T-shirt above his belt." Nestled!

"Really very sexy" is The Guardian quote used on the front cover. Really? Even the hilarious description of Thomas in Mother`s Son? "...how handsome she found him... he was odd-looking, with a crooked nose and a big loose mouth... his skin flared sensitively where the raw planes of his face were overgrowing...."

If this is what Hadley and her mates at The Guardian find sexy then god help them. It sounds to me like Thomas needs to see a doctor.

And then, even if one ignores these ridiculous descriptions, there's Hadley's careless repetition of style and imagery: too many things are `washed' or `rainwashed`, all the men have black curly hair, the women are all complex and sensitive and so it goes drearily on... .
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