Ordinary People

Shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2019

‘You can take a leap, do something off the wall, something reckless. It’s your last chance, and most people miss it.’

Two London couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. 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? Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, love and ageing. It is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us.