Accidents in the home - Tessa Hadley

'A novel as tight as a snare-drum and as bright as the moon' Financial Times

Discover the debut novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Late in the Day and Free Love, Tessa Hadley.

Clare and Helly have been friends since school. Now, Clare is married with three small children, she bakes her own bread and buys her clothes from the charity shop. Meanwhile, Helly is an actress and has her golden curves pasted up on billboards ten foot high. Each of them seems to want what the other has.

An improbable coincidence brings Clare back into contact with someone she once had sex with at a teenage party: he's Helly's new boyfriend. The encounter needn't have meant anything - it could just have been funny, or embarrassing - but it seems to have the power to shake up everything in Clare's life.

Accidents in the Home dips in and out of the lives of Clare's complicated, close, fraught family, reaching out into the past for explanation and illumination as well as across the present. This is the debut of a quite formidable fictional talent.

'This writer is a rare and startling gem; she deserves to be read' Guardian