I'm not generally a big fan of short stories, because I think the genre doesn't have the opportunity to really develop characters well. But hats off to Ms Hadley for the job she's done here. I found nearly all of these stories interesting and even satisfying in some way. I liked the emphasis on relationships and the presence of slightly damaged people. There are often slightly quirky characters, but they are explored and revealed in such a way that we get some idea what lies behind that quirkiness. We can see that they are all real people. ( )

This is a set of stories about relationships. Not necessarily a very cheerful or optimistic set of stories, but each one does find something to say about the nature of relationships. They feature young love, old love, loss and parting with a clear eyed lack of romanticism. In one sense nothing much happens in any of these stories, yet each of them tells us something fundamental about relations with other people. It wasn't exactly a fun book to listen to, but there was something deep in each small tale told. ( )

Another half star if I could.

I am a big fan of Hadley's and there are some very good stories in this collection - Pretending, In the Cave, In the Country. I love her style which is so smooth and then, at the end, you feel a big emotional punch. ( )

The twelve stories collected in Tessa Hadley’s Married Love are carefully observed and, at times, subtle. They tend toward interiors. Lives of middle-class (or aspirationally middle-class) English women and, sometimes, men. Although the decades in which the stories take place vary across the 20th century, the tone is remarkably similar. Indeed, except in special cases, the voice of markedly different characters, even across different stories sounds very much the same. However, it is just those special cases that reveal Tessa Hadley as a writer of significance and almost unsettling calm.

The title story, “Married Love”, stands out, while following it closely in intensity are, “A Mouthful of Cut Glass”, “In the Country”, and “Because the Night”. These are unsentimental accounts of insistent lives. An inner something, possibly fire, drives the main character in each. I found them curious without being riveting. Sometimes it is as though the writing is on the verge of being bold and daring and then pulls back. Call it reticence, a very English demeanour. ( )

This is a collection of twelve interesting but somewhat gloomy stories that explore the human heart through various prisms. A nineteen announces to her family that she plans to marry her lover--a professor 45 years her senior. A family gathers in the country for the matriarch's 60th birthday. A girl forms a friendship with an imaginative outcast. A young man sets his sights on marriage with a wealthy second cousin but returns from the war to a surprise within himself. A young woman struggling with her brother's suicide forms an unlikely friendship with a gruff older woman. Three adult godchildren gather to sort through their godmother's belongings. The situations Hadley depicts are, for the most part, rather banal, but once they take off, the stories tend to travel in unexpected directions. I read a review that claimed Hadley has a gift for opening lines. True--but she has an equally strong gift for conclusions. Most of these stories aren't neatly wrapped up; instead, they may simply come to an abrupt halt or gently wander off. But what they generally do is conclude with an image that stays in the reader's mind.

I enjoyed this collection much more than Hadley's novel The London Train, and perhaps it is because her style is so well suited to the smaller but more intense frame of the short story. It forces the reader to focus on her tightness of language and the crystalline quality of her descriptions, her believable dialogue and characters that ring true. While I can't say that I loved every one of these stories, I definitely appreciated Hadley's mastery of her craft. ( )