The Past
“Hadley…makes you feel for these imperfect people, want to scold them, and ultimately accept them as they are. Just like family.”
People
A Kirkus Reviews Pick for Winter’s Best Bets
A Time Magazine Pick for the Best Books of 2016 So Far
A Huffington Post Best Book of 2016
A People Pick of the Week
Three sisters, a brother, and their children assemble at their country house one last time before it is sold. The house is filled with memories of their shared past yet beneath the idyllic surface, hidden passions, devastating secrets, and dangerous hostilities threaten to consume them.
Sophisticated and sleek, Roland’s new wife arouses his sisters’ jealousies. Passion erupts where it’s least expected, shattering the quiet self-possession of Harriet, the eldest sister. Over the course of this summer holiday, the family’s stories and silences intertwine, small disturbances build into familial crises, and a way of life-bourgeois, literate, ritualized, Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end.
Praise