When I was in Waterstones before Christmas looking for gift ideas for my family (everyone gets books as presents, so I spend quite a bit of time in bookshops in the lead up to Christmas), a couple of staff members saw me having a look at this book and said that they had both read and enjoyed it. And so I bought a copy of the novella The Party by Tessa Hadley for myself to read.

The blurb on the back of this book says

In this irresistible novella about two sisters coming of age, Tessa Hadley explored the ever-changing desires, the sudden revelations and the lasting mysteries that are bound up with who we are and who we might become.

Evelyn 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 she couldn’t explain it.

On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students’ party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn’s misgivings.

As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them and release them into a new phase of their lives.

Evelyn is Moira’s big sister, and with her sister at home for the Christmas holidays she is invited to a party for the art students (Moira is herself an art student, whereas Evelyn is a languages student). At the start of the book Evelyn is somewhat in the shadow of her big sister, always looking to her for her opinion on everything before she can fully form her own, never fully sure, though, that she agrees with her sister even though she may say she does.

Through the events of the party, the days afterwards and their subsequent invitation to the house of two wealthy men they met at the party a few days later, the girls both learn a lot about each other and themselves, and do a lot of growing up.

This is a story about the two girls coming of age, of testing their own boundaries and their place within their families. It is also a story about class. Moira and Evelyn are very much middle class. Their position as students (one already at University) in posts-war Britain demonstrates their class as contrasted with the lifestyle of Paul, Sinden and their friends and relatives at the second evening gathering at Paul’s house. Neither the girls, nor Paul and Sinden particularly like each other. And you very much understand that Paul and Sinden (and even the girls at the second gathering) look down on Moira and Evelyn, the local girls. They are being used for entertainment. But Moira and Evelyn do not like their hosts either, and are going for their own entertainment.

The book ends very shortly after the second gathering, where the events that take place change the sister’s lives. They do a lot of growing up in the space of a few short days and the book ends rather hopefully, with the sisters’ relationship with each other much improved despite what happened.

I thought this was a very well written book, with characters that were both likeable and rather unlikeable – complicated, like we all are. It depicts the time it is set in very well, you feel transported back to post-war Bristol.

It is a novella, and just 115 pages long, so you only get a snapshot of these girls’ lives. Maybe all the lessons they have learned in the past few days and the improvement in their relationship will not last, but you don’t see that. You just see that little snapshot of a couple of days of their lives. Generally I love that sort of snapshot of a life book, but I am also not a huge fan of short stories. And a novella is somewhere in between a short story and a book. I find it difficult to get into a story in a short story, there isn’t;t time to properly understand or get to know the characters. So while I felt it was a very well written book, and there were elements I enjoyed it didn’t massively grab me. If you do like short stories, though, then this is a very good one.

I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars.