A compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London.

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.

With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters’ inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is an enthralling, irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our lives.

Review:

Sophisticated, astute, and passionate!

Free Love is an intimate, sentimental tale that sweeps you away to London in the late 1960s and into the life of Phyllis Fischer, a middle-aged married mother of two who, after feeling mostly content as a housewife for years, suddenly has a reawakening when she embarks on a love affair with Nicholas, the twenty-something-year-old son of family friends.

The prose is lyrical and descriptive. The characters are authentic, honest, and multi-layered. And the plot sweeps you away into a compelling, greek tragedy-like saga about motherhood, independence, responsibility, age disparity, adultery, seduction, desire, secrets, freedom, independence, compromise, and love.

Overall, Free Love is an atmospheric, pensive, provocative tale by Hadley that does a wonderful job of highlighting all the challenges and changes women experienced both personally and professionally during that time, and although I don’t think it will be everybody’s cup of tea, it is abundantly clear from the outset that Hadley is an exquisite literary writer with an uncanny ability to lay bare the lengths and sacrifices humanity will go to all for the sake of love.

This novel is available now.

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