Everything Will Be All Right A Novel [Paperback]

When Joyce Stevenson is thirteen, her family moves to the south of England to live with their aunt Vera. Vera and her sister Lil aren't at all alike. Vera, a teacher, has unquestioning belief in the powers of education and reason; Lil puts her faith in seances. Joyce is determined to be different: she falls in love with art (and her art teacher). Spanning five decades of extraordinary change in women's lives, Tessa Hadley'sEverything Will Be All Rightexplores the tangled history of one family and the disasters, hopes, compromises, and ambitions of successive generations.

TESSA HADLEY teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University College. Her first novel,Accidents in the Home,which was excerpted inThe New Yorker,was longlisted forThe Guardian's First Book Award. She lives in Cardiff, Wales.

Her gift as a writer is so considerable that her characters' revelations and predicaments linger in the mind long after her narrative has darted of in other directions. Alice Traux,The New York Times Book Review

This may sound formulaic, the stuff of bad women's magazines, but in author Tessa Hadley's hands it's anything but. Carolyn See,The Washington Post Book World

Hadley has written gorgeous contradictions and harmonious and inharmonious interactions into a warm novel that follows the contours of four generations of a family and, in the end, shows us ourselves. Gretchen Gurujal,Associated Press

Complex, intelligent...expertly captures the texture of daily existence and the struggle of three memorable women to make their way in the world. Publishers Weekly

Discussion Questions
1. Do you think male and female readers will respond differently toEverything Will Be All Right?
Why? Is there such a thing as a women's novel? A man's novel? Explain.
2. What is the significance of time and place in the story? In what ways do history and cultulœ