The Master Bedroom

Fortysomething college prof Kate Flynn, the unsentimental anchor of Tessa Hadley’s The Master Bedroom, exposes the volatility behind buttoned-up family life with wince-inducing clarity. After more than 20 years in London, she lives an existence of steely glamour and eccentricity, leaving lipstick on the rims of her whiskey glasses and claw marks in her cold cream. Until, that is, she’s yanked home to Wales to nurse her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, Billie. There, she seduces her childhood friend David—and his 17-year-old son Jamie.

Hadley has a penchant for picking up on character flaws, but her portrayals of messy relationships seem to stem more from an interest in human behavior than from mean-spiritedness. This is especially true in the way she describes David, a hardheaded scientist, and Suzie, his mystically inclined wife. Their marriage starts to deteriorate when Suzie becomes convinced that a swan that has smashed into her car is the reincarnation of David’s dead former wife. Pin-thin Kate has plenty of faults too, but that doesn’t prevent Hadley from creating a spark between her heroine and the stubborn David. The novel also convincingly reveals how Jamie’s interest in Kate’s book-filled world turns to obsession, setting up the bizarre love triangle that drives The Master Bedroom’s final act.

Hadley proves to be an extremely droll writer, one who can dole out acidic observations worthy of British authors such as Rachel Cusk. But The Master Bedroom is much more than a comedy of errors about flawed intellectuals and stoner moms. It’s also a meditation on parents and children and how reason can be used to obscure the truth. Most notably, it captures the fragile yet worthwhile comfort exchanged among its cast of malcontents.