A review by lazygal
Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley

4.0

A difficult book to review - it's not really plot-driven, it's more a memoir-like account of a woman's life that started off with some semblance of promise and devolves from there. What might have happened to Stella had she not been a teen mother is always a question, and some of her choices are less than well-thought-out. But Stella's story is more than that and at the same time somewhat less: she's a normal person, living a life that isn't filled with adventure and Big Things but instead is filled with regular, everyday things and events. And that's the difficulty in reviewing, isn't it? You want to be able to say "and then the murder happened..." or something significant, but most of our lives aren't filled with those things, they're small moments that add up. Hadley's recounting of Stella's life reminds readers of that, and how even those small moments are important.

ARC provided by publisher.