The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Accidents in the Home

Accidents in the Home

The debut novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author

Summary

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

Clare and Helly have been friends since school. But since then, their lives have moved in opposite directions.

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 could have the power to shake up Clare's whole life…

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

Reviews

  • Few writers give me such consistent pleasure
    Zadie Smith

About the author

Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley is the author of eight highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home, which was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl, The Past, Late in the Day, Free Love and four collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love, Bad Dreams and After the Funeral. She won the Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction in 2016, The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more