This very short and perfect novel is the fourth published by Edicions de 1984. Tessa Hadley, an English author who masterfully portrays family relationships and paints scenes set in the placidity of a Sunday afternoon that are inevitably clouded. The party It is a kind of tragedy in three acts, in the classical style, that narrates the coming-of-age of sisters, Evelyn and Moira, who are middle class and daughters of a dysfunctional marriage: the husband no longer hides that he has a mistress and the wife endures it as best she can. Sunday roastThe main English family meal: as she might say with curlers in her hair, on the verge of tears. But Tessa Hadley is the queen of alternating moments of maximum light and maximum darkness, detecting the sadness hidden in the happiest moments and the light born from the deepest tragedy. The scene immediately following the family meal, where the two daughters comb and dress their mother at a dressing table, is of exemplary beauty and elevation, made solely with combs, hairpins, and dialogues laden with subtext.