The slightly bland, slightly intriguing title of Tessa Hadley’s new novella suits her unassuming but compelling style. The first section of The Party opens with what would seem to be the main event, but the following two sections also have social occasions at their centre, rippling out from the original one. Twenty-something Evelyn and her sister Moira attend a function arranged by their friend Vincent in a grotty pub in the Bristol docks. They encounter – and eventually elude – two unappealing and persistent men named Paul and Sinden. The next day, they shake off their hangovers at dinner with their mother and brother; then, in the rainy dregs of the weekend, they go to a loosely arranged and unsettling gathering at Paul’s house.

This is a story of self-discovery and transformation: by the end of the weekend, Evelyn is no longer the woman she was at the start. There is something Dantean about the three episodes with their small carnivals of characters: the grizzled drunks and pretentious students at the pub; the cosy but repressed family; Paul’s upper-class circle, which includes a cruel and sickly brother propped against a pillow and a hulking, indifferent American soldier. 

Hadley’s fiction is generally written in an authoritative third-person voice with access to the characters’ inner lives. The pleasure of reading her work comes from an almost imperceptible sense of the author’s presence – like a ghost among her characters, observing them and their world. Hadley’s voice sounds both