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Overview
After more than twenty years in London, Kate Flynn has abandoned her career as an academic, rented her apartment in the city, and moved back to live with her mother in the grand old house beside a lake where she grew up. Bored and lonely, Kate meets a childhood friend, David Roberts, at the opera. David is married, but Kate finds herself falling for him against her better judgment.
At the same time, David's seventeen-year-old son is visiting Kate's house in secret, attracted by her eccentricity, her wit, and her shelves full of old books and music. Though she knows the risks, Kate cannot quite resist either man. As both father and son set about their parallel courtships, Tessa Hadley's intricate, graceful novel discovers the anxieties of adulthood, and the hazards of refusing to grow up.
Synopsis
Novel set in present-day England, in which a father and son fall in love with the same woman.
The New York Times - Liesl Schillinger
Tessa Hadley is a lovely, subtly teasing writer, studiedly evasive in her treatment of emotions and eerily precise in her sketches of everyday people in upper-middle-class British settings. Who her characters are, and what they want, is so deeply concealed (even from themselves) that they could be nude and lose none of their mystery…In The Master Bedroom, no relationship is as solid as it might seem, no course of action necessarily makes sense, and motivations are buried. Yet Hadley's favorite theme emerges clearly: the heart has no logic, the brain cannot always keep it in rein and nature controls human behavior—not the other way around. The novel is a chess game of slow-burn erotic maneuvers that produce tantalizingly unpredictable outcomes.
Editorials
Liesl Schillinger
Tessa Hadley is a lovely, subtly teasing writer, studiedly evasive in her treatment of emotions and eerily precise in her sketches of everyday people in upper-middle-class British settings. Who her characters are, and what they want, is so deeply concealed (even from themselves) that they could be nude and lose none of their mystery…In The Master Bedroom, no relationship is as solid as it might seem, no course of action necessarily makes sense, and motivations are buried. Yet Hadley's favorite theme emerges clearly: the heart has no logic, the brain cannot always keep it in rein and nature controls human behavior—not the other way around. The novel is a chess game of slow-burn erotic maneuvers that produce tantalizingly unpredictable outcomes.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
This dreamy and thoughtful third novel from Hadley (Everything Will Be Alrightand Accidents in the Home) chronicles the slow-burning midlife crisis of Kate Flynn. A cigarette-smoking, high-heel–wearing Russian lit. prof, Kate has given up frittering among the London intelligentsia to move back to Wales and care for her aging mother, Billie. Against the backdrop of wintry Cardiff, Kate contends with her rekindled desire for David Roberts, now a married public health doctor. She simultaneously attempts to ward off the infatuated advances of David's teenage son, Jamie. As all concerned cavort provokingly, Hadley sympathizes with her quirky, stubborn characters and impulsive protagonist without excusing them, and the simmering love triangle between David, his son and Kate keeps the placid storytelling from falling into a meditative lull. (July)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
Midlife is tough enough without moving back to your hometown to care for your mother, who is succumbing to dementia. Having taken a leave from her London teaching position, Kate Flynn is now in Cardiff, Wales, living with mom Billie in Firenze, their now dilapidated ancestral villa. She reconnects with best friend Carol and, ultimately, with David, Carol's younger brother. David's first wife, Francesca, committed suicide years earlier. Left with his young son, Jamie, David eventually married Suzie and had two more children. But Suzie is suddenly acting strangely, and David is bewildered by his now 17-year-old son. David runs into Kate at a concert, and their mutual interest in classical music seems like an omen to him. Discovering that Kate knew his mother, Jamie also gravitates toward Firenze and lands in an affair in that rarely used bedroom. Unfortunately, Kate is the least sympathetic character in this latest from Hadley (Everything Will Be All Right). She is gruff with poor Billie (always has been, really), dismissive yet needy of Jamie's attentions, and unable to acknowledge David's feelings. Despite generally fine writing, this novel suffers from this major flaw; an optional purchase for large fiction collections.
—Bette-Lee Fox