Ordinary People (Shortlisted For The Women'S Prize For Fict

Description: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE NOMINATED FOR THE SOUTH BANK SKY ARTS AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 'I am shouting from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about this book. It's so so good - realistic and funny and so truthful it almost winded me' Dolly Alderton, The High Low Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn't want to let it change her. Damian has lost his father and intends not to let it get to him. Michael is still in love with Melissa but can't quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Stephanie just wants to live a normal, happy life on the commuter belt with Damian and their three children but his bereavement is getting in the way. Set in London to an exhilarating soundtrack, Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and ageing, and the fragile architecture of love. 'I just finished Ordinary People by Diana Evans and it is utterly exquisite. What a writer she is - the depth of her insight, the grace of her sentences. WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME NOT READING HER?' Elizabeth Day, Twitter `God this book is fantastic' Pandora Sykes

Review: "Diana Evans is a lyrical and glorious writer; a precise poet of the human heart" -- Naomi Alderman, author of The Power "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 * "Achieves a moody, velvety atmosphere, as though events were unfolding under amber-tinted bulbs...offers a precise sketch of the British black middle class, with a daring fifth-act twist" -- Katy Waldman * New Yorker * "Evans gives us romance going cold with just as pitiless a precision as Flaubert in Madame Bovary... Evans's prose is magnificent: it's as if she measured each sentence, trimmed the excess weight, then fitted it into place" * Daily Telegraph * "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 *





Author Biography: 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

A funny, sad novel about two couples on the brink of crisis from 'a lyrical and glorious writer' (Naomi Alderman)