The Party

An irresistible novella about two sisters and a night that changes everything, from the master chronicler of our heart's hidden desiresEvelyn had the surprising thought that bodies were sometimes wiser than the people inside them. She'd have liked to impress somebody with this idea, but couldn't explain it.On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, students on the cusp of adulthood, go to a party in a dockside pub where they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, who have an air of worldliness and sophistication which both intrigues and repels them. Sinden elicits their phone number, but the sisters don't expect to hear from them again and are surprised when he calls a few days later to invite them to another party, at the crumbling mansion he lives in with Paul. Moira accepts despite Evelyn's misgivings, and as the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that both shock and release them into a new phase of their lives.In this exquisite novella of two girls coming of age, Tessa Hadley asks and answers timeless questions about the power of desire - whether for another person, another version of yourself, or life itself.