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This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Tessa Hadley read her story, The Quiet House,

from the February 2nd, 2026 issue of the magazine.

Hadley has published 13 books of fiction, including the story collection's Bad Dreams and After the Funeral, and the novella The Party, which came out in 2024.

She is a winner of the 2016 Wyndham Campbell Literature Prize.

Now here's Tessa Hadley.

The Quiet House. Geraldine woke out of busy dreams into the calms and shallows of old age.

There were two skylights in her attic bedroom,

and when she opened her eyes,

she saw clouds floating past,

slow and stately against a pale sky.

The angular under-shape of a gulls flight

was printed for a moment soundless beyond the glass.

She was alone in the absolutely quiet house.

She was used to this, and it mostly felt like freedom after the long years of her marriage.

In her dreams, however, she had been plunged back into the thicker things,

noisy crowds of people, children, movement, a train journey, talk, pleasure, sociable effort.

She dreamed that Mati Shamansky came to visit her on a bicycle and was still young,

...