There is a house in a small English village that has fascinated Tessa Hadley (Bristol, 1956). Whenever she passed by, she thought it might be a good idea to inspire a story there. She didn't know more than the façade of it, but all the rest would be done by her imagination. “At the end of the day, inventing stories is my job,” she smilingly recalls to La Vanguardia. The author came to Barcelona a few days ago precisely to talk about that house and the plot she devised as a result of it and which materializes in the novel The Past (Sexto Piso/ Edicions de 1984), which has just arrived in bookstores in translation. in Spanish and Catalan.
When she began to lay the foundations for the book, she had just finished her previous work, Clever Girl, focused on the life of a woman over fifty years. Therefore, she was clear that she wanted to spend three weeks with her character. “Just the necessary time to be able to delve deeply into their lives.” She imagined four brothers returning to a house near the coast – very similar to the one on their walks – that, for generations, has belonged to the family and that is full of memories. The same place where her mother, fed up with her husband, took them when they were children.
It is a large house that requires maintenance that none of them seems willing to pay for, so they decide to spend one last vacation together to decide what to do with it and, surely, say goodbye. “It is inevitable that the past and tensions will resurface. The relationship between siblings is always deeper than that of a best friend. Whether you get along with them or not, you have experienced the same things and have grown together and shared experiences, good or bad.”
Despite its calm prose and the good general chemistry between the protagonists, Hadley was in favor of “dropping explosive pills that would alter and give rhythm to the story.” One of them was to incorporate two external characters into the close family circle: Kasim and Pilar. The first is the son of a former partner of one of the sisters. And Pilar is a brother's new Argentine girlfriend. “They have different ways of being that, at certain moments, will disturb the routine peace, but at the same time allow certain aspects to be objectively contemplated.”
Hadley insists that the novel “is not inspired by my family. I don't even have that many siblings and, I suppose, for that reason, in my fiction, I make my protagonists have many. When I was little, I remember leaving little notes on my mother's pillow asking her to give me a little brother, but she didn't even pay attention to me. Nor is his grandparents' house as deeply rooted among his loved ones as the one in his book, but "without a doubt, any home is special, especially if it has been part of our childhood, because it is in those houses where we have learned the meaning of beauty and ugliness and where our imagination has grown to unexploitable universes today.”
Another theme that motivated the writer to enter this universe is how many secrets go to the grave with us. “Our ancestors took with them many things that we will never know because they do not alter the present at all. They are lost secrets, which once surely worried someone a lot and which have now been left in limbo. I confess that I have some that I do not know will ever be revealed. But I think we are all the same. Who doesn't have something, no matter how small, that they prefer not to confess?
The aging of women is also present in her lines, as was the case in previous works. “It is something that I am interested in reflecting on because, no matter how much feminism advances, it is still tremendously current and society is too concerned about how we age. It is necessary to persist, delve into the layers and look for the root.”
Although she cannot provide any information, the author claims to be already involved in a new plot. Since she started publishing at the age of 46, she feels that she cannot (nor does she want to) put down her pen, and she writes down every little idea that runs through her head. “Why did I start so late? Well, I studied literature at Cambridge, and then I saw what Shakespeare and Tolstoy and so many great authors had done that, next to them, I became smaller and felt ridiculous. It may be impostor syndrome, but at that time nothing was given a name and I continued writing, but for myself. I ended up writing four novels that will never see the light of day. Over the years, I understood that I couldn't be completely happy if I didn't write. And then I faced something that I should have done a long time ago, and I couldn't stop, and I hope I never will."
