Join us to welcome bestselling author Tessa Hadley to Penarth to celebrate the publication of her new novel Free Love.

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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. With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters’ inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. 

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Tessa Hadley has published eight novels and three short story collections for adults in her career. She was born in Bristol and now lives in Cardiff. Her novels have sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide and as of 2016 she is a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.