Oh I really wanted to like this, but sadly it just fell a bit flat for me
Struggled to keep my attention. Never read a Tessa Hadley book before so not sure if this is the usual style, but the form, particularly with speech for example was so distracting.
Not for me.

A book dealing with a middle-aged housewife who embarks on an affair that completely change her life and the lives of those around her. Well written with great characters it was a really good read.

This is an absorbing read that evokes the atmosphere, feelings and changing direction of women at the end of the 1960s.

I love that the main character is in her 40s and living live as a housewife and mother, seemingly unaware of the massive changes taking place out side her social circle.

When a young man arrives for dinner one evening it throws the whole household into turmoil and acts as a catalyst for change for every family member.

Wonderfully written book, subtle, wide-ranging, sympathetic and engaging, it covers so much ground but also offers immense detail - very satisfying read.

This is my first Hadley novel, a writer I've been meaning to try for some time, so I can't say whether this is characteristic of her fiction: for me, it's competent and efficient but also constructed and a bit clichéd. The writing is clear and precise, detailed and visual - but there's nothing exceptional or personable, it's all smooth, bland and neutral.

The story feels like a familiar one: a 40-ish suburban housewife gets a sexual awakening and abandons bourgeoise comfort for a vaguely anti-establishment lifestyle. Along the way we see the fall-out in her family, and there's a rather laboured revelation that verges on melodrama and which seems rather too neatly formed for my taste.

The setting is 1967 but really this looks back at so many books that question the conventionality of middle-class domestic life, and doesn't really have anything new to say. This feels rather old-fashioned to me both in terms of writing style and content and it's hard to see what the writerly intention is. So not really my thing, I'm afraid, but that's subjective taste rather than a criticism of the book.

This novel is set in the London of 1967 – and opens with a (rather reluctant on both sides) visit to a rather conventional suburban family by a twenty-something year-old son of a family friend – one with an unexpected outcome.

The family is Roger Fisher, an Arabist in the Foreign Office; Phyllis his wife; Collette - a rather over-earnest older daughter with a crush on her English language teacher; and Hugh – an easy going 10 year old in the final flush of boyhood freedom ahead of a likely future at his Father’s boarding school.

The visiting son is Nicky Knight – his parents Peter and Jean friends of Roger via his parents and assisted in Roger’s recuperation after his activities in the war. Nicky is living in London is something of a squat, mainly off his mother’s allowance, and the little he can make working as a left wing journalist.

Rather unintendedly on both sides Phyllis and Nicky exchange a passionate kiss during a rather farcical pond-based hunt for the missing sandal of one of Hugh’s playmates.

The incident awakens something in Phyllis and at her instigation the two begin an (at first) sporadic and covert affair – the book tracing how this turns into first a relationship, then full on cohabitation and finally loves its covertness and how this plays out for Phyllis but also for Roger and Collette in particular. There is also party way through a twist which even the characters admit to be a little unexpectedly coincidental.

This is a very competently written book – there is a strong sense of place and time, the book as far as I can tell being anachronym free, not just in period detail but more strongly in the attitudes and reactions of the characters. The problem with this is that it feels like the book too is very old fashioned and uninvolving with the characters attitudes and life-arcs seeming (precisely because of their accuracy) almost clichéd. Nicky for example is predictable in his denunciation of Roger and his world view - Phyllis in her late discovery of the freedoms of the late sixties (sex, drugs, music and dancing, commune style art and the questioning of accepted authority).

Like Nicky himself I felt like I had paid a visit to rather conventional suburban novel – but without the unexpected outcome.

There is a reason that Tessa Hadley is regarded as one of the best living British writers - she has an incredible way of evoking a time and a place and her characters shine. I loved every page of this brilliant book.

I really enjoyed this book. It was my first by Tessa Hadley and I'll definitely read more. The book is set in 1967 and I think it does evoke the spirit of the times well. It is beautifully observed.
Phyllis is heading towards 40 and is a stay at home mum, married to dull, reliable Robert who works in the Foreign Office. They used to be posted overseas but returned when Phyllis had trouble with pregnancies. They have two children, 15 year Collette and 7 year old Hugh. They live in outer London surburbia in (fictional?) Otterley on the train line but not the Tube. One evening they invite Nick, the son (in his early twenties) of an old friend to dinner as his mother wants him to know some people in London as he has recently moved there to try his hand at writing and journalism. Nick is not looking forward to the dinner and arrives a bit sloshed. Phyllis flirts as she usually does with male guests and so Nick imagines fancying Phyllis as a way to pass the time. When they go in search of a child's lost sandal into next door's overgrown garden Nick drunkenly kisses Phyllis. Phyllis feels the kiss is the most passionate she has ever experienced and it unleashes in her a mad desire and so she pursues Nick into bohemian multicultural London where her staid life becomes untethered.

Tessa Hadley is a writer who deserves to to be better known if this book is anything to go by - it is exceptionally beautifully written has a cast of realistically drawn characters, and a naturally fluid plot that keeps the reader engaged - what more can anyone ask? This is the story of a very ordinary and firmly middle class family in 1960s suburbia. Their lives are turned upside down when Phyllis, the mother falls for a younger man and leaves the family home to find herself - a very 1960s thing to do! Her whole world expands and she begins thinking outside the life that had up until that point, been mapped for her by her upbringing, marriage, motherhood and social status. The book explores themes of freedom and the place of women in society and is brilliantly empathetic in drawing all the characters, from the most buttoned up to the freest of pot smoking artists. For me, it took a little while to get going, but was otherwise a wonderful book.

I really enjoyed this story of Phyllis, a middle aged housewife, who is bored with her dull life in suburbia and embarks on a fling with a much younger man. The transformation of Phyllis from a bored, dull housewife into a strong, modern and independent woman is quite remarkable. This relationship turned her whole family upside down and I was really saddened by the effect that it had on her 2 children, Colette and Hughie, who I felt never really recovered from their mother’s sudden abandonment.
This book was beautifully written and, even though I felt all the way through that this tale was never going to end well for all concerned, it was really enjoyable and I found myself racing through it. There are a few twists and turns along the way which drew me further in.
Thanks to the publishers and to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read it in return for my honest review.

Tessa Hadley is a wonderful novelist and this, in my opinion, is her best work so far. Phylis is a middle aged (40) housewife stuck in dreary 1960’s suburbia. Married with two children she unexpectedly meets and falls for a friend’s son. Like a slow motion collapse of a large building we watch how this infatuation affects all generations. The writing is beautiful. The settings pitch perfect. The details are spine tingling. In an autumn of really wonderful books, this one occupies a top spot. Couldn’t recommend more highly.

The title recalls the heady days of the Summer of Free Love, Woodstock, the Swinging Sixties, anti-war demonstrations - and the whole sex ,drugs and rock & roll era - when it was said that if you remembered it, you weren’t really there. Hadley has brilliantly portrayed the atmosphere of that time, although her protagonist is not the expected teenage rebel against authority, but a middle-aged woman trying to regain her lost youth with an unsuitable liaison. It is a modern take on the Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary tragedies, which we know will end in tears, but Hadley has sensibly avoided the easy moralising aspect to keep the reader’s empathy with her flawed characters. Highly enjoyable!

Free Love is the story of the Fischer family, Roger,Phyllis and their children Colette and Hugh. The Fischer's are middle-class family living a typical suburban lifestyle in 1967 until a visit by the son of a old friend turns their lives upside down. A brief flirtation brings their cosy and comfortable world crashing down as Phyllis decides there's a lot more to life than she has and makes a decision that rocks her family to the core.

The story takes a while to get interesting,at the beginning it feels very much like the story-line from the kind of thing Carla Lane was writing very successfully for TV in the 70's and 80's,. Then as time goes on and realisation sinks in Phyllis' actions start to increasingly influence the lives of the other members of her family and long-held secrets surface.

It seemed to me as if Free Love was partly an allegory of the times it's set in, the upheaval and disintegration of the Fischer's formerly conventional life in suburbia and in other parts of the story a decaying area of London being bulldozed to make was for the Westway mirroring the changes in society and the end of Empire in the late 60's.

This is not my usual kind of book but while initially it appeared to be a fairly lightweight melodrama I was very soon involved in it. Tessa Hadley write beautifully, not only about her characters but in particular the places she writes about,be they decrepit blocks of flats in London, sprawling and decaying country houses or even sights and people of Iran remembered by a young man from his youth.

Maybe this is now, "my kind of book" as as soon as I finished it I spent some time online adding the rest of Tessa Hadley's books to my "Wishlist".

A beautifully written, thought=provoking and understated book.

This is not a book I would normally read but was given the opportunity from the publisher due to reviewing another of their novels so I thought, why not? Shouldn't we all step out of our comfort zone once in a while.

I have to say that for something I did not have great expectations for, I really enjoyed this novel.

Phyllis is married to Roger, a fairly nice but boring civil servant however is sexually (re-)awakened with the re-introduction of the son of her friends. Much against her public character she embarks upon an illicit affair with him.

Tessa Hadley is clearly a great novelist and the pacing of the story and depth of characters is excellent. Definitely a recommended read.

Thanks to Random House UK, Vintage, Jonathan Cape and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.



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