There’s no rule about how many pages define a novella but, when Moby-Dick seems like too much of a challenge, there’s something comforting about a book so short that it can be read over the course of an afternoon. One of the biggest success stories of recent years is Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, which ran to a mere 15,000 words. Tessa Hadley’s latest book, The Party, is a similar length and equally immersive.
Set in postwar Bristol, the book is centred around sisters Moira and Evelyn as they negotiate two social events. The first in a pub, where the older and more worldly-wise Moira throws herself into music, dancing, and flirting with a trumpet player. The second at a grand house, where they encounter a smaller crowd, so solemn at first that Moira wonders whether they’ve been brought there as “a blood sacrifice”.
There are hints of Muriel Spark here, with girls of slender means, having taken on the traditional male jobs during the war, unwilling to return to subservient roles now the men have come home. They demand respect but are still treated as objects. When they first arrive at the party, for example, one man looks them up and down and declares them “not bad”. Later, when Evelyn is invited to bed by an unattractive fellow, she declines on the grounds that she has no feelings for him, but “he hardly seemed interested in that”. When he kisses her, he informs her, somewhat to her surprise, that she likes it.
The imbalance between the sexes is reflected in their home life too, where Rose, their mother, is little more than a skivvy for their father, who makes no secret of the fact that when he visits his mistress, he still expects a good dinner to be waiting for him later that night.
The Party by Tessa Hadley review: Immersive novella set in postwar Bristol
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There are authors to whom one can always turn in confidence, whose gift for storytelling is matched by their dexterity with language. Across 12 previous books, Tessa Hadley has elevated herself into this category, but with The Party, she’s also proved that she can achieve in 100 pages what it might take others three times that amount to accomplish.
