Name: Sunstroke and Other Stories
Rating: 3.75 (2 reviews)
ISBN: 9780312425999

Tessa Hadley

A new collection of short stories by the author of Accidents in the Home explores the various undercurrents that lie hidden inside domestic relationships despite efforts to preserve the facade of a loving and stable family life. Original. 15,000 first printing.

Sunstroke and Other Stories

Everyday life crackles with the electricity sparking between men and women, between parents and children, between friends. A son confesses to his mother that he is cheating on his girlfriend; a student falls in love with her lecturer and embarks on an affair with a man in the pub who looks just like him. Young mothers pent-up in childcare dream treacherously of other possibilities; a boy becomes aware of the woman, a guest at his parents' holiday home, who is pressing up too close against him on the beach. Hidden away inside the present, the past is explosive; the future can open unexpectedly out of any chance encounter; ordinary moments are illuminated with lightning flashes of dread or pleasure. These stories about family life are somehow undomesticated and dangerous.

Sunstroke and Other Stories

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