Ordinary People

by Diana Evans

Overview

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and the Rathbones Folio Prize
Winner of the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature
A Washington Post “Lily Lit” Book Club Selection

Hailed as a “lyrical and glorious writer; a precise poet of the human heart” (Naomi Alderman), London-based author Diana Evans received international acclaim for Ordinary People. In a crooked house in South London, Melissa feels increasingly that she’s defined solely by motherhood, while Michael mourns the thrill of their romance. In the suburbs, Stephanie’s aspirations for bliss on the commuter belt compound Damian’s itch for a bigger life. Longtime friends from the years when passion seemed permanent, the couples have stayed in touch, gathering for births and anniversaries. But as bonds fray, the lines once clearly marked by wedding bands aren’t so simply defined. Sweeping eloquently from the specific to the universal, Ordinary People “unpacks the intersection of race, gender, and politics with something as profoundly intimate as marriage” (Claire Fallon, Huffington Post)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631494826
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	09/11/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	846,808
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Diana Evans is a London-based novelist whose debut, 26a, won the Orange Award for New Writers. Ordinary People was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, the Women’s Prize, and the Rathbones Folio Prize, and won the South Bank Sky Arts Award.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/01/2018
Bookended by President Obama's 2008 election victory and Michael Jackson's death, this new novel from Evans (26a) tells the story of a group of young, mostly black Londoners searching for equanimity in their personal and professional lives, with the music of John Legend, Jill Scott, and Amy Winehouse providing the soundtrack as they navigate the rocky roads from dating to mating and parenting. Michael and Melissa ("M & M" to their friends) are parents to seven-year-old Ria and baby Blake. While Michael works long hours in the city, Melissa resentfully juggles children, work deadlines, and a house suffering from mice and mold. Michael remains deeply committed to their relationship (together for 13 years, they have never married) and to their multicultural community, but Melissa has become disenchanted with both him and the drugs and gangs that have entered and endangered the neighborhood. Meanwhile, their friends, including Stephanie, whose white, middle-class upbringing is beginning to clash with partner Damian's activist urges, face similar work and relationship challenges and look to Melissa and Michael as an ideal, unbreakable force. VERDICT With astute observations on marriage and parenthood, sublime descriptions of sex, and an accompanying playlist to boot, this novel is anything but ordinary. It's a sparkling gem. [See Prepub Alert, 3/12/18.]—Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Library Journal

07/23/2018
Evans’s striking novel (following 26A) investigates the relationships of two sets of friends as they navigate pivotal moments during 2008. Melissa and Michael remain engaged after 13 years; Melissa misses her former job as a magazine’s fashion editor, which she left to care for her seven-year-old, Ria, and infant, Blake, while Michael longs for the passionate relationship they used to have. Continually feeling rebuffed at home, Michael searches for attention from others and notices a younger woman in his office. Hesitant to be unfaithful, Michael plans an outing to connect with Melissa, but the evening falls short of expectations and Melissa withdraws further. Meanwhile, in the second narrative, Michael’s friend Damian is frustrated with Stephanie, his wife of nearly 16 years, because she refuses to live in London like their friends, opting instead to raise their children in the suburbs, thereby squelching his dream of city life and ambition of being a writer. Along with coping with the recent loss of his activist father, Damian believes his wife and her family don’t share his values, and instead measure their success by the size of their home and the private lessons they provide their children. With penetrating emotional and psychological observations, Evans creates a realistic portrayal of the couples as they struggle to redefine commitment. Readers looking for careful studies of relationship dynamics will find much to contemplate. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Diana Evans has masterfully crafted a beautiful, nuanced story about love, loss, and redemption. With compelling prose and an uncanny insight into the questions life throw at us as human beings, she has established herself as a voice to behold."

Nicole Dennis-Benn

"If Ordinary People is about compromise, it is also about how we live today and, refreshingly, Evans shows this through the prism of black and mixed-race identities, conjuring an urban milieu that is middle-class and non-white.... [This novel] has universal appeal in its reflections on love and yet carries a glorious local specificity.... 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."

Arifa Akbar

"Deep and addictive.... Evans zooms out to build her characters' culturally rich backstories as they struggle to recognize their older selves and the relationships that have aged along with them. A probing, entertaining, and self-affirming novel of men and women getting relatably lost in the crises and hauntings of early midlife."

Annie Bostrom

"The award-winning author of 26a and The Wonder returns with her first novel in nearly a decade and it’s a doozy: a scandalous, explosive contrast of two marriages, both of which vie to survive crises over the course of a year."

Entertainment Weekly

"Epic… Evans' exuberant prose, which bursts at the seams with description, is the real star of this book."

"The Books of September 2018 We Can’t Wait t Refinery29

"A smartly satirical portrait of metropolitan thirtysomethings.... the agony of ordinary life is also what makes Ordinary People an absorbing read. Evans gives us an entirely believable account of relationships, recognizing how they defeat us, encircle us and leave us gasping for air. Part of this believability comes of her ear, attuned not only to John Legend albums, but the entire acoustics of the noughties."

Shahidha Bari

"Ordinary People sings with every word. The writing is pitch perfect, the underlying politics of race and gender is never heavy handed, and the characterization of south London is enviable. I know these streets and they beat to the music that runs through this book... a lyrical and beautiful story. It's a triumph."

Christie Watson

"That rarest thing: a literary novel about real, recognizable human beings—a poignant portrait of middle life in London's middle class. Evans has given us four thirtysomething characters so perfectly drawn that they seem to come from a brilliant Netflix dramedy, but has rendered them with a classical prose so confident that it seems to come from a 19th century novel. Beach reading for the thinking beachgoer: as intelligent and insightful as it is hilariously entertaining."

Taiye Selasi

"Diana Evans is a lyrical and glorious writer; a precise poet of the human heart."

Naomi Alderman

"The book achieves a moody, velvety atmosphere, as though events were unfolding under amber-tinted bulbs. Bracketed by Barack Obama’s electoral victory and Michael Jackson’s overdose, Ordinary People also offers a precise sketch of the British black middle class, with a daring fifth-act twist."

The New Yorker

"Evans, the author of two previous books, has earned comparisons to Dickens with her panoramas of a jumbled, multitudinous London, but Tolstoy remains her spirit guide in how he intertwined the public and the private, the momentous and the mundane.... Exceptionally sensitive writing."

Katy Waldman

"Evans’ novel explores the fault lines that can run through a marriage, and unpacks the intersection of race, gender, and politics with something as profoundly intimate as marriage."

Huffington Post

"Sharp, moving."

Southern Living

2018-07-02
A portrait of a relationship on the brink set in Great Recession-era London.British author Evans (26a, 2005), winner of the Orange Award for New Writers, has centered her new novel on a love in crisis. Black Londoners Melissa and Michael are on "the far side of youth, at a moment in their lives when the gradual descent into age was beginning to appear," and outwardly they seem to be a properly suited pair. Melissa's best friend, Hazel, even refers to them as "Chocolate"—playing off their initials, M&M—and what could be more perfect than that? Nonetheless, as can be expected in a novel dedicated to the underside of a long-term relationship, all is not well at 13 Paradise Row, the home Melissa and Michael share with their two children. Balancing dry humor, wit, and empathy, Evans expertly delineates her main characters' frustrations: The expectations of both motherhood and romantic partnership leave Melissa on the precipice of exploding in anger or having a breakdown, while Michael laments, mostly while drinking red wine, that his desire for Melissa is unrequited, a view steeped in nostalgia for the honeymoon phase of their relationship and explained through the music of John Legend, whose second single gives the book its title. Most of the time Evans' writing is accurate as she moves from the small details of domestic life to larger ideas—feminism, urban life, black identity. Here she is describing the doldrums of monogamy: "Passion, at its truest and most fierce, does not liaise with toothpaste. It does not wait around for toning and exfoliation. It wants spontaneity. It wants recklessness. Passion is dirty, and they were too clean." At other moments, Evans' narrative choices seem perplexing, such as her use of the slang phrase "off the hizzle" as a refrain; it seems dated and less cool on the page than when emanating from the mouth of Snoop Dogg circa 2005. In fact, the biggest weakness of an otherwise astute novel is Evans' occasional overreliance on pop culture. For instance, the story is bookended by the first election of Barack Obama and the death of Michael Jackson, two culturally significant moments that are, at best, tangential to the story.Evans frankly and unflinchingly depicts a romance overwhelmed by the ennui of everyday life.

Kirkus Reviews