Thank you Random House UK and Netgalley and I really wish I'd read this sooner.
Beautifully written and I really enjoyed this book. Being a 60's child (well born in the 60's I don't remember much about them) I really wanted to read this and am glad I did.
I would highly recommend this book and will probably read it again.

It's 1967 and we are introduced to the Fischers. Phylis, Roger and their two children, teenager Collette and nine year old Hugh. Roger works at the foreign office whilst Phylis is a housewife. They live an idyllic life in a gorgeous home.

When the Fischers invite a twenty year old son of an old friend to their dinner party, their suburban bubble is about to burst.

Phylis and the young man Nicholas Knight exchange a passionate kiss whilst out in the garden. This incident triggers a sexual awakening and she abandons bourgeois comfort for a covert affair. Phylis makes a decision which will change all of her family's lives forever.

Along the way we see the fall out in her family and there is a huge revelation which I definitely was not expecting.

This is my first Hadley novel that I have read and will not be my last.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy in exchange for an honest review.

Hadley writes beautifully, with a deceptively light touch about relationships and life at a crossroads. A great novel for those who enjoy the accessibility of commercial fiction with a literary edge.

I have been desperate to enjoy Tessa’s books as much as so many others. I’ve read a couple but never really been able to find anything to grab hold of. Well, I was in luck with Free Love as I adored this: a tender, bittersweet portrayal of a middle-aged woman – a wife and a mother – taking a chance on a rash love affair and the hope of freedom.

We are in 1967. The 60s are rapidly becoming the 70s and free love is the order of the day. All this should appeal to the teenage Colette who is the ever-so typically sullen teenager on the cusp of leaving school. But instead, Tessa focuses in on the mother, Phyllis, a woman whose suburban residence, wardrobe and family life seem stuck in the 50s.

When a young man comes to dinner, it is Phyllis not Collette whose life is turned upside down. She sees her life as half-lived, repressed, and ill-informed and chooses instead to walk out on her responsibilities and even duty for a life in bohemian London.

It is this decision by Tessa to reframe the Swinging Sixties as coming in too late for the previous generation of women that gives this novel its heart. Phyllis is a woman who wants to cling desperately to the hope that it isn’t too late for her, that she too can have her sexual and political freedom. But, of course, when you are a mother and wife, it is more complicated.

Tessa’s writing on the interiority of all the characters is sublime. The focus she gives to all the longings and missed opportunities in her cast, as well as the awkwardness and false dawn of female liberation.
The supporting cast are as beautifully drawn as Phyllis. Her husband, Roger, is surprising and appropriate, whilst Tessa’s handling of the repercussions for Phyllis’s two children, Colette and Hugh is smartly done. This is a beautiful and affecting read and, for book clubs especially, there is so much to pull out and examine here on motivations, repercussions, and responsibility.

This is the second Tessa Hadley novel I've read and I adored it.
It's 1967 and Phyllis Fischer is married to Roger and has two children, Colette and Hugh. When Nick, a twenty something family friend comes for dinner Phyllis is drawn to him and soon makes a life changing decision.
This is a beautifully written and insightful novel that I was completely immersed in. The writing is understated and subtle and yet really brings to life the characters and their repressed emotions. It is an atmospheric read, beautifully portraying the 1960s and the attitudes of the time. It is thought provoking and I did have strong views about Phyllis and her actions. A novel that will really stay with me and I'd highly recommend it.
4.5 stars
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

After years of reading rave reviews of Tessa Hadley’s work, I’m wondering why it took me so long to read Free Love. This is an immersive novel, told with such skill that it’s hard to believe the characters have not lived and breathed. The plot wraps itself around you in a subtle way, and I found myself having moments of realisation and clarity along with the characters. I loved how Tessa created a sense of time, in terms of sensibility and of era as she explored the conflict of values and appearance and an understanding of what it means (and costs) to be happy. The west London setting added to my enjoyment as I have lived and worked there. Highly recommended.

This is a beautifully-written story of Phyllis, a 1960s housewife in suburban London. At a dinner for her friend’s son, she steals an elicit kiss with him - Nicky (whilst searching for a neighbour’s son’s sandal in a pond) - and this sets off a life-changing series of events for Phyl and her family.

At the beginning of the story, there is a focus on Colette and Hugh, quite different children, and Phyl’s husband, Roger. Later, it is clear that her behaviour triggers significant changes for the family, particularly for Colette who becomes rebellious . When Phyl leaves her comfortable life behind on a whim, she heads to London to track down Nicky and so begins her new life - one without structure, comforts and security.

This is a story about one woman’s quest to change her life - and change it she does. Adding fuel to the fire is becoming pregnant and having baby Michael, and finding out a long-hidden truth about Roger, Nicky’s mother, Jean, and Nicky himself. Superb in many ways, this novel shows the lengths people will go to in order to obtain happiness.

Free Love by Tessa Hadley takes place in the sixties and follows a respectable housewife who embarks on an affair that turns her life upside down.

Nothing Free About It

After seeing this title on a few end of year Top Fiction Reads for 2022, this was one of the first books I chose, to get back into the reading rhythm. Perhaps for that reason, it took a little while to get into, but once it reached the first significant turning point, the plot became more interesting and surprising and the choices the author made, much more thought provoking. It would make an excellent book club choice.

In essence, 40 year old Phyllis – who was living a conventional life as a housewife with two children, her husband Roger working at the Foreign Office – steps out of the submissive role she has been wed to, when a friends’ son comes to visit. Prior to this moment she hadn’t appeared to be frustrated with her life.

“In fact she was easy, an easy person, easily made happy, glad to make others happy. She was pleased with her life. The year was 1967.”

The encounter leads to numerous consequences, increasingly dramatic, that will affect everyone in the family. Our housewife leaves her middle class, manicured English lawn suburb for a rundown, seedy apartment building in Ladbroke Grove, teeming with diversity, creativity, and people living in the moment.

A Housewife Acting on a Crazy Impulse. Really?

In the initial chapters, it was difficult to believe. Every reader will bring to their reading of the story, their own imagining of how this mother could abandon all for something that feels like it will be fleeting.

But then you slowly accept it, recalling the era in which it was set, knowing there was a whole other way of living and being in the 1960’s, a revolution against convention and authority, a risk taking utopian fever spreading its tentacles among the young and not so young.

Colette, Not Yet Colette

The teenage daughter Colette is the more tortured soul, an astute observer, a lonely intellectual who read everything, though refused to read the novelist her mother said she was named after.

“Her father’s intelligence was so much stronger than her mother’s, Colette thought; yet it was the slippery labyrinth of her mother’s mind – illogical, working through self-suggestion and hunches according to her hidden purposes – which was closed to Colette, and therefore more dangerous for her.”

While we may feel sorry for the children – the son was always going to be sent away to boarding school, an interesting juxtaposition, to set side by side, twin forms of abandonment – it is interesting to see how the relationship between mother and daughter evolves under the new circumstance of their lives.

Colette starts skipping school.

“When she got to London Bridge she put her satchel and uniform in a left-luggage locker. All she did in the city was walk around in the crowds, pretending to be absorbed and purposeful like everyone else. She went to browse in certain bookshops, in Carnaby Street she bought tinted sunglasses, underground magazines and cones of incense from stuffy little shops, also henna to dye her hair at home. Sometimes she screwed up her courage to ask for a glass of barley wine in a pub, then sat alone defiantly to drink, reading.”

Honesty versus Secrecy

It was interesting to imagine a conventional housewife having such courage or impulsivity to do what she did. The choices Phyllis makes are surprising and daring, and just when we think she is the only one capable of making such counter conventional choices, there is another twist in the story.

It becomes a story about consequences, those that are dared lived out in the open, versus those that have been hidden. Then it gets really interesting. It makes you wonder, should those secrets be kept or shared? One can never predict the consequences of either route, but this story attempts to pit one against the other.

It reminded me of the experience of reading Brian Moore’s The Doctor’s Wife.

Coming Full Circle

The ending is more poignant than conclusive, it reiterates the messiness of real lives and the power of forgiveness, the benefit of setting aside judgement, of being true to oneself without having to reject the other.

“Phyllis had been braced to defend herself against her husband. On her way to meet him, she’d summoned an idea of his authority, implacable and punitive, mixed up with his role in the world of Establishment power. Now she was taken aback by how he bent his head before her, opening himself so easily; his kindness drew one sob out of everything loosened and raw inside her.”

An enjoyable and thought provoking read ad an author I’d be happy to read more of.

I liked the authors wtiting style in this enjoyable book which gave an interesting new twist on London in the swinging 60s. Why should the young have all the fun?

Free Love is a wise, insightful novel about a women who decides to leave her family for a younger lover and the repercussions of this.

It is 1967 and 40-year-old Phyllis Fischer is married to Roger, a kindly civil servant at the Foreign Office, with two children. When we first meet Phyllis, she appears content with her comfortable life, but an encounter with young bohemian Nicky Knight awakens in her a longing for more. Over the following months she embroils herself not only in an affair with Nicky but also in the world of 1960s counter-culture. Phyllis's choice will have profound consequences not just for herself and Nicky but also for her whole family.

This is an extremely well-written and well-plotted novel, and all the main characters are sympathetically drawn as they respond to the upheaval they are facing, both in their own personal lives and in society as a whole. Tessa Hadley's evocation of the late 1960s is convincing and immersive without ever feeling like it is trying too hard. The end of the novel becomes a rather moving reflection on missed opportunities in a changing world.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this excellent novel to review.

When Phyllis allows herself to kiss a young man she remembers a part of herself long buried. As she returns to herself she finds life peppered with much more interesting characters. Hadley writes with such understanding of human nature. Each person’s understanding of the world varied and justified from their own perspective.
An interesting history of social practices and attitudes at this time.

A good bit of a different read that set up an interesting tale. Didn’t see coming some of the plot twists. We’ll written would recommend

Phyllis Fischer is a middle-class housewife living in 1960s suburban London. Seemingly content with her Foreign Office husband, five o’clock gins and formica countertops, a clumsy kiss with a young dinner guest initially seems like nothing more than drunken silliness. However, the encounter stirs something in Phyllis and she soon trades domesticity for Notting Hill’s hippy scene. Gently witty and effortlessly enjoyable, this is a wonderful book about desire and self-discovery. I began Free Love on a glum Saturday when my husband tested positive for Covid. Not only was Tessa Hadley’s novel the irresistibly entertaining read I needed to distract me from our cancelled plans, it was a kind one, too. Hadley writes her characters with such warmth, that I was deeply fond of Phyllis by the end of the novel.

When Nicholas enters the lives of a 1960s suburban family, Phyllis' life changes forever. And so begins Phyllis' awakening. I really loved this novel, but felt its ending seemed rushed. However, Hadley's writing is wonderful and she evokes the period so well, it's definitely worth a read.

I chose to read Hadley's new book because I have repeatedly heard her name and wanted to try reading one of her novels. The novel's setting and how Hadley built the suburban world of 1960s London grasped my imagination. The story was good, although I felt that at some points, it lacked something that would push the novel even further. Overall, it was a good read, and I would be interested to read more from Hadley.

In FREE LOVE, Tessa Hadley creates a lively atmosphere as you dive into the UK in the 1960s. Unfortunately, the characters never come fully alive and the narrative lingers on without too many surprises. Hadley has written an interesting novel without taking a lot of risks. The story starts with a great family dinner setting, where we learn about the characters and their ambitions. Shortly after this dinner, Phyllis, the mother, leaves her husband for a younger lover and tries to find out who she really is. Due to her break with the family, all the members need to re-establish who they are and what they want. The story picks up at the ending with some twists, but it never reaches new heights.

Set in London in 1967, this is the story of 40-year-old Phyllis, an outwardly conventional suburban housewife living an outwardly contented suburban life with Foreign Office husband Roger – a remarkably decent chap, by the way – and her two children. But underneath, we are led to believe, she simmers with unexpressed desire, and when one evening the couple entertain the 20-something son of one of Roger’s old friends an unlikely and unconvincing kiss sets off all sorts of complications. Phyllis falls for him – immediately – and runs off. Fluently and competently written and with a superb sense of time and place, this story of one woman’s “liberation” just feels so ordinary, so bland, offering the reader nothing new or particularly interesting. It’s all been done before, surely. It might have helped if I had related to Phyllis, but I didn’t, as her self-centeredness was alienating. There is some good observational writing here about family and marital life, about the excitement of new relationships, and some acute psychological insight. But ultimately it all felt inconsequential to me, with characterisation often bordering on stereotypical and a plot twist that frankly was melodramatic and unconvincing. I wanted to carry on reading to find out how it all panned out, but was left feeling underwhelmed.

A very interesting and well written book with fascinating characters and a controversial subject. Will be recommending it to friends and family.

1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy.
But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family's upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.

Liked it more than I thought I would
This was the first book I’d read by Tessa Hadley, it’s not the usual type of book that I would choose and I had put off reading it for a while. When I did start it I really enjoyed the story, characters and the time it was set in. it definitely showed the pressures and the views of different ages and people in the late 60’s onwards and how widening their circle and understanding of the world changed the female characters lives. A lovely read, recommended.
Thanks for NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
#FreeLove #NetGalley