Ordinary People

Author Diana Evans
Narrator Jennifer Saayeng
Publisher Random House
Publish Date 19 July 2018
Run Time 11 hours and 47 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.

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What to expect

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Ordinary People by Diana Evans, read by Jennifer Saayeng.

'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.

Critics 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

Ordinary People…is very insightful… a detailed, well observed description of modern marriage

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

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

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

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