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"Surprising and rewarding...Hadley has pulled off an important and tricky task.... Not many books remind you so directly and forcefully that reading is about creating new ways of seeing the world."
--"New York Times Book Review"
--"New York Times Book Review"
Book Description
'Spectacular-rich, lush and intricate as an Oriental rug' Observer
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As an introduction to 'Accidents in the Home' we are provided with a helpful diagram illustrating the structure of the complicated family that is featured in the novel. When reading it, from time to time I referred back to this family tree, in order to make sure I understood the position of the main characters featured in each chapter. This was particularly helpful because of the way in which the novel is constructed - each of the chapters being almost a short story, some of which did not at first seem to be part of the continuity of the novel. Only towards the end of the book did it become clear how well the author had knitted them together to construct the whole. Each chapter, while featuring key incidents and different family members, contributed to the reader's understanding of the main protagonists. As in the best modern short stories, there were what seemed to be almost gratuitous additional observations, both to entertain the reader, and to enhance awareness of the context. The style is deceptively simple. The presentation suggests the influence of those earlier authors that the heroine is studying. Happily the author sufficiently distances herself from her characters that any excess of sympathy for them is avoided. I hope that if I suggest that 'sensitivity' is avoided this will be read as a compliment.
The men in the novel get rather a bad press. They seem to have a part to play, the possibly reluctant seducer whose influence remains but whose presence is dispensed with, the dull and worthy husband, the selfish old patriarch, and Graham Menges, the potter who almost by accident collects wives. The women may be more fully drawn, but they too seem to have little control over their destinies. One gravitates to various men; another seduces her friend's husband. The characters seem to have only limited ambition to take charge of their own circumstances. But Ms. Hadley seems fatalistically inclined, as the novel's title suggests, and will not permit any of her creations to act out of character.
The book is well worth reading. I felt as distanced from its milieu as I do from many Victorian novels, and rather relieved that this was the case. I am sure that any younger, female, reader would discover much to enjoy, and not a little to find disturbing, in this rewarding first novel.
The men in the novel get rather a bad press. They seem to have a part to play, the possibly reluctant seducer whose influence remains but whose presence is dispensed with, the dull and worthy husband, the selfish old patriarch, and Graham Menges, the potter who almost by accident collects wives. The women may be more fully drawn, but they too seem to have little control over their destinies. One gravitates to various men; another seduces her friend's husband. The characters seem to have only limited ambition to take charge of their own circumstances. But Ms. Hadley seems fatalistically inclined, as the novel's title suggests, and will not permit any of her creations to act out of character.
The book is well worth reading. I felt as distanced from its milieu as I do from many Victorian novels, and rather relieved that this was the case. I am sure that any younger, female, reader would discover much to enjoy, and not a little to find disturbing, in this rewarding first novel.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this novel the main character, Clare,'s narrative is only told in every other chapter. In the others, various members of her family (or rather, a group of families linked by multiple marriages) take centre-stage in chapters that are self-contained and have individual titles like short stories. This made it, for me, one of those frustrating books where the most interesting scenes are left out. For instance, in one chapter, Clare (married, provincial) and her best friend Helly (single, urban) end up swapping partners one weekend; two chapters later we meet Clare again, now separated from her husband and in a different domestic setup. This wouldn't have mattered much except that the story was so well told up to then that I'd got to really want to know how Clare and Bram would deal with the aftermath of the weekend, and was never to find out.
So it's not great if you're into strong plots - or if you like realism, as it takes place in that strange world (not unfamiliar in a certain kind of fiction) where everyone is works in the arts, Higher Ed., the media and science, and no-one works in manufacturing, insurance or I.T. But I really did like the characters, particularly the women, who are described with great sympathy and tenderness as they pursue various useless men. Like this: "Out on the road in the dark and the rain she was remembering this moment: the cosiness of the underwater light in the little room; the open poetry books; the sense of their being marooned there together amidst the waters, outside the world; the warm curl of possibility that a flirtation had begun, no more than that, nothing that needed to be thought through or faced, just a wriggle of pleasuring possibility that could swim in and out of stern realities irresponsibly as a fish."
So it's not great if you're into strong plots - or if you like realism, as it takes place in that strange world (not unfamiliar in a certain kind of fiction) where everyone is works in the arts, Higher Ed., the media and science, and no-one works in manufacturing, insurance or I.T. But I really did like the characters, particularly the women, who are described with great sympathy and tenderness as they pursue various useless men. Like this: "Out on the road in the dark and the rain she was remembering this moment: the cosiness of the underwater light in the little room; the open poetry books; the sense of their being marooned there together amidst the waters, outside the world; the warm curl of possibility that a flirtation had begun, no more than that, nothing that needed to be thought through or faced, just a wriggle of pleasuring possibility that could swim in and out of stern realities irresponsibly as a fish."
Format:Paperback
Tessa Hadley's first novel is really a set of interlinked short stories, based around the Menges family, particularly one of the daughters, Clare, and her father, Graham. Both Clare and Graham seem to have rather a bad track record with relationships - Graham moves from marriage to marriage almost by accident, collecting children on the way (and almost certainly ending the novel by being cuckolded and persuaded to accept a child that isn't his by his manipulative third wife)while Clare ends her marriage to the sturdy and reliable Bram almost on a whim, having suddenly decided that she's been leading the wrong life for several years. In the meantime we meet lots of other members of the family: Marion, Clare's loyal and stoical mother, caring for her elderly and cantankerous academic father, Tamsin, Clare's emotionally damaged sister, who steals money to buy clothes to assuage her sense of loss after the death of her baby, Naomi, another emotionally damaged woman, still reeling from her divorce from Graham and Toby her son, a gentle 'lost boy' type. It's a shortish book, and we never get to know any of the characters really well (I would have liked, for example, like one of the other reviewers, to know more about the breakdown of Clare and Bram's marriage and the end of Clare's friendship with the glamorous Helly). Clare's children (the saccharinely named Coco (Jacob!), Lily and Rose) were also rather brattish - Hadley is much better on the whole with children in her later novels. And, as this is really a series of pictures of the Menges family life, there is no real 'ending' - life continues, and we don't ever find out if the characters resolve their various problems. On balance I'd probably give this novel three and three-quarter stars if I could. If you want a well-shaped, in-depth examination of a family over several generations read Hadley's second novel, 'Everything Will Be All Right', first. But if you're looking for a series of vignettes of family life, and some wonderful description of places, read this and enjoy.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Well written but perhaps over ambitious
This was certainly a well written and readable piece of work but what spoiled it for me was the author's seeming over ambition in trying to turn it into a family saga instead of... Read more
Published 16 months ago by A. Linton
Why is there all this hype about her?
Having read the quotes from what I class as the 'good' newspapers, I thought I would be on to a winner with this book. How wrong could I be! Read more
Published on 30 Jun 2006 by Mrs. H. C. Openshaw
A wonderful web of complex relationships
Once I got over the first chapter (weak and tentative), I thought this was terrific stuff. Iris Murdoch written by Justin Cartwright in drag. Read more
Published on 16 Dec 2005
I was very sorry to reach the end...
I really enjoyed this novel. The characters are very real and 'fleshed out'. The joy of reading the novel is the sharing of their experiences - pain, confusion and simple... Read more
Published on 29 Aug 2002
Purposeless
Sorry, but I really couldn't understand the purpose of this story! All the way through the book I felt as if nothing significant was really happening and I felt completely unmoved... Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2002
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