Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Nominated for the South Bank Sky Arts Award
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.
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.
Industry Reviews
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 *
Ordinary People...is very insightful... a detailed, well observed description of modern marriage -- David Nicholls * Good Housekeeping *
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 *
Diana Evans's fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time -- Jackie Kay
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 *
I'm currently very much enjoying Diana Evans's novel Ordinary People, which takes a forensic look at the pleasures and perils of marriage and parenting and modern London living -- Sarah Waters * Guardian, Best Summer Books *
Ordinary People offers a unique insight into the complexities and the challenges of modern life, identity and that lovely little thing we call love. From the moment I started to read it I was absolutely gripped - that's how good it is. It is a beautifully crafted, honest exploration of how relationships are forged and deconstructed, and how the everyday and the remarkable can exist side by side. * Benjamin Zephaniah, South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2019 *
