How happy can I expect to be? Is what I’ve got enough? Am I leading the life I was meant to live? In what could be the most aptly-named novel of the year, these questions are explored through the intertwined lives and loves of 12 ordinary people from one Sussex village. The distinctly-voiced characters impact on one another in subtle yet significant ways, but without the passionate internal dramas of each ever being fully revealed to anyone beyond the reader.

Central is Laura, middle-aged, married and mostly content, until she receives a letter from her first and greatest love wanting to meet. She is excited by the prospect of rekindling the relationship and does not tell her director husband Henry, who is battling his own brand of discontent at work. No less compelling are the other intricately connected voices, each with their own secret longings and fears.

Nicholson has woven a perceptive, deceptively simple page-turner that shows the most outwardly unremarkable lives as rich and dramatic. The twice Oscar-nominated screenwriter, playwright, children’s author and novelist has written a book both absorbing and insightful, and deserves wide acclaim and sales by the shed load. Tell your friends.