Description

**“Exquisite.* ***— *Minneapolis Star Tribune* **• **Brilliantly observed.”** — ***People *, Pick of the Week* * **“A beguiling novel, deceptively easy to read; beneath the surface swim disturbing and age-old questions about freedom and fate.” — Hilary Mantel** **From the bestselling author of *Late in the Day* and *The Past* comes 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 irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our selves – a novel that showcases Hadley’s unrivaled ability to “put on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own” (Lily King, author of *Euphoria* ).