THEY say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Nonsense. Tessa Hadley’s new collection of short stories is graced by a Gerhard Richter photorealist painting that is entirely appropriate to the mood of its contents.

Richter’s daughter turns away from us in an enigmatic, unknowable gesture, one that can be interpreted in any number of ways. Richter’s work, like Hadley’s inventions, is not didactic – both are ingeniously and generously open to a variety of readings.

Hadley’s own mastery has been long recognised by the New Yorker; seven of the tales here appeared first in their pages.

In a 2019 Guardian interview with Lisa Allardice, Hadley is said to have a theory that “if you mention writers you admire in reviews, your work becomes associated with them”.

So, we will avoid name dropping dead literary greats as comparators and go with pop singers instead.

Hadley’s detached stance as a spy in the house of love, her lugubrious interrogations of broken marriages and class snobberies, call to mind the likes of Ray Davies, Lou Reed and even Bobbie Gentry – wondering what Billie Joe has thrown off Tallahatchie Bridge.

We admire her concerns for those who live unflashy lives, the forgotten people.

Like Ray Davies’ Two Sisters, Hadley is interested in sibling rivalry: in Men, two sisters who haven’t met in 15 years pretend they haven’t seen one another.

Then there’s Serena dealing with her other sisters and her dying mother in The Bunty Club, or the teenager in Cecilia Awakened, both of whom realise, as with another Davies classic, that I’m Not Like Everybody Else.

Cecilia’s epiphany, a new understanding of her parents “burdens of expectation, their oppressive familiarity”, give her a shot at a kind of redemption.

And as with many of Lou Reed’s songs, we are forced to look at ourselves and others without illusions.

Hadley’s stories delight in confronting us with truths that say: “I’ll be your mirror, reflect who you are.” Old hippies are pilloried for the neglect of their children, as with the best story here – Funny Little Snake.

Men who drone on and on are exposed: you might find your own face reddening in recognition at some of the flaws her characters betray.

Hadley is wonderful at faces: we see a child with “wide-open grey eyes affronted and evasive and set too far apart”; a man who’s face without glasses “was naked and keen and boyish, with a boy’s shame”; an architect with lips “the colour of raw liver”.

And here she is on Caravaggio’s Isaac under Abraham’s knife: “the son’s face was his whole dreadful knowledge of the world.”

In Hadley’s world once, minor guilts take on a deeper significance with time, as with Children at Chess.

HERS are tales of disillusion where it’s hard not to hear the Pink Floyd in the background singing how hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.

A gaze on Hadley’s planet can be as cold and impersonal “as a lighthouse beam”.

Like an optometrist, Hadley revels in mapping out blind spots, emotional scotomas, and gives no comfort in confronting us with our flaws.

Here be dull academics ignoring their families, feckless offspring, mums with petty jealousies. But there’s also deep pity, particularly in Funny Little Snake, that practically cries out – Call the Social Services!

Anne Enright has said: “Hadley, for all the felicity of her prose style, is an immensely subversive writer.”

This is correct: Hadley’s tales have lessons; some are fables where humans behave like beasts. She blows raspberries at Chelsea bohemians, party animals druggily shoving their children to one side.

You’re reminded of Mike Leigh’s films, where we see stoners supping mead and bores going on about university politics.

Hadley’s writing is also political with a similar empathy for the underdog, a chiming distaste of unwarranted privilege.

You might take away the idea that these stories can function as a shield of sorts, a warning, a prophylactic against emotional error, a form of armour, even. But the real lesson here is that you’re still going to get hurt.

Hadley’s works share a sentiment with Green from Scritti Politti when he sings that love in this life is tricky, that we make mistakes, and that it “only goes to show how wrong a heart can be”.