The world in the living room

SHORT STORIES: EMILY FIRETOGreviews Married LoveBy Tessa Hadley Jonathan Cape, 232pp. £14.99

The stories in Tessa Hadley's new collection, Married Love,are novel-esque. They're not especially long, nor do they hinge on convoluted plot twists; but they feel packed with detail and description, so much so that a character's entire life is presented within 20 pages. More often than not there is a sudden and massive shift in time, and, while sometimes awkward, such redirection allows Hadley a novel's worth of development in each of these tightly spun stories.

Hadley has written four novels, two of which have been longlisted for the Orange Prize, so it is no surprise that her novelist-impulse to provide a plethora of information about even minor characters results in stories that feel stuffed to capacity. Many start with the classic “attack sentence”: “Lottie announced that she was getting married”, “Their parents had fantastic parties, they were famous for it”, “After the sex, he fell asleep.”

But rather than launch into her story at the same, breakneck speed, Hadley has a curious habit of turning back around her opening sentences, explaining in circles her characters complex relationships, so that the beginnings of the stories in this collection are sometimes confusing, and often odd and even cold. Somewhere in the middle, however, there is a shift – the relationships click, the characters awaken, and the situations twist in complex and interesting ways.

By the end, each story feels like a cumulative success. Hadley resists the temptation to resolve her stories in neat conclusions. And without the typical Joycean epiphany, so overplayed in modern short stories, Hadley concludes by focusing in on her characters’ emotional states. They never really do come to understand why they feel, or if they do; their lives do not fundamentally change for better or worse. In the title story, Lottie is desperate to marry an elderly professor even though her family disapproves and predicts a horrible life for her. But she does so anyway, has a handful of children, and ends up living the moderately horrible life they predicted, of which she is acutely aware and about which she does nothing. The pleasure in this collection comes from these moments of clarity and understanding; they’re subtle, and are usually quite satisfying.

Stories that concern the different manifestations of love and marriage could be categorised under the useless label of domestic fiction but it is not simply the plight of the female character that drives this collection. In the Countrydescribes a family reunion, full of careful observations about marriage, in-laws, children, and affairs. Julie notes her husband Ed's manner in the clearest possible terms: "Whenever he first entered the family home he put on a face of nervous suffering which exasperated Julie, so that she kept her distance from him. – Happy birthday, Mother, he said, frowning and blinking."

Despite the tragedies or complications, though, everything turns out OK. Love affairs and painful marriages stand little chance against the status quo. Characters are comfortable with who they are and unconcerned with the larger world.

If there's a criticism of this precise and well-drawn collection, its precisely that – the smoothness and consistency of character is at times too easy and comfortable. The family reigns supreme, and family will love you no matter what. (Only in A Mouthful of Cut Glassdoes class move to the forefront of the story.) The quippy dialogue, likewise, is extremely clever, and well-crafted. Even a young girl whose brother died by suicide is able to see the pettiness in her mother wearing the dead brother's checked shirt under her own clothes, and the sister is likewise confident enough to be emotionally present on a winter walk with the brother's girlfriend. There is no danger, no unease; at times this can feel like a sort of emotional elitism.

These are quiet stories that challenge easy understandings of interpersonal dynamics and show the full complexity of human emotions. With humour and a lot of wit, Hadley elevates local, emotional relationships so that they completely eclipse any need for plot. It is refreshing to read stories about family that feel important – even if that importance never extends beyond the living room.

Emily Firetog is a contributing editor at the Stinging Fly