In this brilliant collection, Tessa Hadley showcases beautifully her formidable talent for writing domestic fiction that rises about the genre to become literary art. “Filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions of class, conducted with symphonic intensity and complexity…. Extraordinarily well-made.”— New York Times Book Review Married Love  is a masterful collection of short fiction from one of today’s most accomplished storytellers. These tales showcase the qualities for which Tessa Hadley has long been praised: her humor, warmth, and psychological acuity; her powerful, precise, and emotionally dense prose; her unflinching examinations of family relationships. Here are stories that range widely across generations and classes, exploring the private and public lives of unforgettable characters: a young girl who haunts the edges of her parents’ party; a wife released by the sudden death of her film-director husband; an eighteen-year-old who insists on marrying her music professor, only to find herself shut out from his secrets. Hadley evokes worlds that expand in the imagination far beyond the pages, capturing domestic dramas, generational sagas, wrenching love affairs and epiphanies, and distilling them to remarkable effect. Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2012: Novels and stories being such different beasts, it's rare to find a writer gifted at both: the quick sketches and implications of a short piece; the steady build and satisfying arc of an extended one. Four-time novelist Tessa Hadley deftly handles any length, as her outstanding new collection confirms. Despite the book's title, Married Love , these dozen taut stories are decidedly unsentimental. In "Friendly Fire," a middle-aged mother cleans toilets in a warehouse, reflecting on her hapless husband and soldier son; in "Post Production," a film director dies suddenly in his kitchen, leaving a bizarre tangle of relationships behind. Hadley has a special talent for opening lines: "After the sex, he fell asleep," reads one. Only a writer at the top of her game could make you care what happens next. You will. -- Mia Lipman Examining the varied panoply of human affection through a dozen precise yet nuanced portraits, Hadley (The London Train, 2011) parses the meaning of love in all its paradoxical, panoramic glory. The title story introduces teenager Lottie, a protected, nerdy girl who dramatically announces her impending, impetuous marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather. Later, we see Lottie weighed down by the reality of domestic tedium and motherhood. Two young lovers travel to meet their families in “A Mouthful of Cut Glass,” only to find their relationship may not stand up under such scrutiny. A young man comes of age during wartime in “The Trojan Prince,” but the torch he carries for a young woman fades in the reality of war’s aftermath. Revisionist history reunites three old friends in “The Godchildren,” while a widow finds reinvigorated life after her husband’s death in “Post Production.” Hadley’s command of the telling detail, the unspoken riposte, and the subtle interpersonal struggles that fuel everyday human actions infuses this collection with both saucy fire and sobering fatalism. --Carol Haggas “Hadley’s power...is best felt as she teases out the often dangerous crackles in the air and cracks in the heart. There’s a louche tautness to her prose...” - Helen Davies, Sunday Times (London) “Domestic relationships are the stuff of these delightfully understated, tightly sprung stories.” - Fanny Blake, Woman and Home “A writer of exceptional intelligence and skill and, for all the apparent conventionality of her vision, hers is a subtly subversive talent. . . . Only Alice Munro and Colm Tóibin, among all the working short story writers I’m aware of, are so adept at portraying whole lives in a few thousand words. With Married Love , Hadley joins their company as one of the most clear-sighted chroniclers of contemporary emotional journeys.” - Guardian “[Hadley’s stories] are often like movie clips of lives in transit, their small shifts of focus yielding up flashes of psychological insight. . . . Hadley excels at the domestic context, at pinpointing the particular quiddity on which an individual character turns; at marking the tiny swings of allegiance in human relationships.” - Rachel Hore, The Independent “A feast of angst and disappointment.” - Evening Standard (London) “Her talent is to take these small details of everyday life and build them into stirring narratives.... Hadley gives space to the smallest emotional currents, allowing them to expand.” - New York Times “A subtly incisive vision and the ability to conjure full fictional scenarios in limited spaces characterize the new collection by a noted British writer….Shrewd, insightful, unpredictable, Hadley’s stories successfully plumb the complicated daily deeps.” - Kirkus “Filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions