The Past

Summary (from the publisher): With five novels and two collections of stories, Tessa Hadley has earned a reputation as a fiction writer of remarkable gifts. She brings all of her considerable skill and an irresistible setup to The Past, a novel in which three sisters, a brother, and their children assemble at their country house.

These three weeks may be their last time there; the upkeep is prohibitive, and they may be forced to sell this beloved house filled with memories of their shared past (their mother took them there to live when she left their father). Yet beneath the idyllic pastoral surface, hidden passions, devastating secrets, and dangerous hostilities threaten to consume them.

Sophisticated and sleek, Roland’s new wife (his third) arouses his sisters’ jealousies and insecurities. Kasim, the twenty-year-old son of Alice’s ex-boyfriend, becomes enchanted with Molly, Roland’s sixteen-year-old daughter. Fran’s young children make an unsettling discovery in a dilapidated cottage in the woods that shatters their innocence. Passion erupts where it’s least expected, leveling the quiet self-possession of Harriet, the eldest sister.

Over the course of this summer holiday, the family’s stories and silences intertwine, small disturbances build into familial crises, and a way of life—bourgeois, literate, ritualized, Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end.

With subtle precision and deep compassion, Tessa Hadley brilliantly evokes a brewing storm of lust and envy, the indelible connections of memory and affection, the fierce, nostalgic beauty of the natural world, and the shifting currents of history running beneath the surface of these seemingly steady lives. The result is a novel of breathtaking skill and scope that showcases this major writer’s extraordinary talents.

 

Review: I received an advance reader's edition of this novel from HarperCollins.

 

The Past is the story of a family's annual reunion, quite possibly for the last time, at their late grandparents' country home. Siblings Harriet, Roland, Alice, and Fran have diverged greatly from their family of origin. Their differences are highlighted by their adult lives - Roland's third wife is sophisticated and exotic, Fran is frazzled by her two young children, Alice still exudes a loud and oblivious charm, and quiet sister Harriet is more austere and distant than ever.  The four siblings lost their mother Jill at a young age to cancer and their father absconded to Paris rarely to be seen again. Thus their grandparents' cottage is the symbol of family, unity, and home to them all. Yet the costs of upkeep means they will likely be forced to sell.

 

This is the second novel written by Tessa Hadley that I have read, having previously read Clever Girl. Similarly, the sections of this novel seems almost like linked stories. The middle section of the novel goes back in time and is written from the perspective of the children's mother, Jill, who is dead in the present day. We see Jill as a struggling mother, returning home for a visit with three young children in tow. Like her adult children, Jill comes home to consider the course her life has taken and make decisions about her future.

 

One of the central images of the book is not the home where they are staying, but a dilapidated cottage in the woods. Interestingly, this cabin is a source of both horror, secrets, and passion. As a child, Jill accepted treats from the elderly couple that lived there, only to throw them away for fear of poison. As an adult, Jill engaged in a tryst in the recently vacated home. Jill's grandchildren, Arthur and Ivy, discover the remains of a neighbor's dog inside the house. Again and again, they visit the rotting scene, deciding not to tell anyone what they've found. Later, the cottage is transformed yet again into a lover's tryst for Roland's daughter Molly.

 

Throughout, there is the repeated theme of others' invading the privacy of others, often taking the form of trying on others' clothes or trading clothes with others in the search for a more authentic representation of self. Harriet secretly tries on Pilar's red blouse: "The blouse made her grotesque; it insulted her as vividly as a slap or a derisory remark" (71). Still in pursuit of her own look, she buys a dress that turns out to be a sartorial failure. This dress is then cast off to Harriet's niece, Molly, while Harriet goes on to borrow clothing from her sister, Alice. Similarly, both Alice and Ivy read Harriet's diary and Alice also read her grandmother's letters, rifling through the past for clues and understanding of her family.

 

This sense of breaking the spell of privacy extends to the house itself. Upon their arrival, Alice describes looking through its windows: "Then it seemed an enchanted place: as if we'd only seen it in a mirror and wouldn't ever be able to get inside it. Now I keep feeling as if I passed through the mirror and I'm living in there, on the other side" (35). The family's opinion of both their country home and one another is better from a distance, on the other side of the glass.

 

The majority of the members of the family seem distanced from one another, despite their efforts to encroach on the secrets of the others. Many seem frustrated with their current life choices and use the summer vacation as a respite from their ordinary life. Perhaps the lesson is that, without the country home to hide in, they will be forced to live fully within their chosen life paths.

 

Stars: 3