Ordinary People - Softcover

Diana Evans

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784742163 ISBN 13: 9781784742164

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2018

Synopsis

** Selected by the New Yorker , Financial Times and New Statesman as a Book of the Year ** 'Diana Evans is a lyrical and glorious writer; a precise poet of the human heart' Naomi Alderman 'You can take a leap, do something off the wall, something reckless. It's your last chance, and most people miss it.' South London, 2008. Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning, on the brink of acceptance or revolution. Melissa has a new baby and doesn't want to let it change her but, in the crooked walls of a narrow Victorian terrace, she begins to disappear. Michael, growing daily more accustomed to his commute, still loves Melissa but can't quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Meanwhile out in the suburbs, Stephanie is happy with Damian and their three children, but the death of Damian's father has thrown him into crisis - or is it something, or someone, else? Are they all just in the wrong place? Are any of them prepared to take the leap? Set against the backdrop of Barack Obama's historic election victory, Ordinary People is an intimate, immersive study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and aging, and the fragile architecture of love. With its distinctive prose and irresistible soundtrack, it is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us.

About this title

About the Author

Diana Evans is a British author of Nigerian and English descent. Her bestselling novel, 26a, won the inaugural Orange Award for New Writers and the British Book Awards deciBel Writer of the Year prize. It was also shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel, the Guardian First Book, the Commonwealth Best First Book and the Times/Southbank Show Breakthrough awards, and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her second novel, The Wonder, is currently under option for TV dramatisation. She is a former dancer, and as a journalist and critic has contributed to among others Marie Claire, the Independent, the Guardian, the Observer, The Times, the Telegraph, Financial Times and Harper's Bazaar. Ordinary People is her third novel, and received an Arts Council England Grants for the Arts Award. She lives in London. @DianaEvansOP www.diana-evans.com

Review

"Thoughtful and intelligently observed... Evans's delicate prose weaves issues of racial identity and politics into the narrative so that they never feel heavy-handed...a deftly observed, elegiac portrayal of modern marriage, and the private - often painful - quest for identity and fulfilment in all its various guises" * Observer * "One of the very many things that makes this book exceptional is the even-handed sympathy and unflinching fidelity with which Evans charts the changing weather both of her protagonists' emotions and family life. She excels at dialogue and she's also a soulful lyrical chronicler of London in all its moods and guises" * Daily Mail * "It could easily be reimagined for the screen, though the film would not capture the sheer energy and effervescence of Evans's funny, sad, magnificent prose" * Guardian * "There is something radical in how Evans depicts the lives of young, black people, faithfully, fully and quietly" * Financial Times * "Ordinary People is a very funny book...a reminder of the power that only the novel has: to show you a familiar world from someone else's perspective" * Evening Standard *

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1784742163
• ISBN 13: 9781784742164
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 329