Ordinary People

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE'I am shouting from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about this book. It's so so good - realistic and funny and so truthful it almost winded me' Dolly Alderton, The High LowTwo 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. 'I just finished Ordinary People by Diana Evans and it is utterly exquisite. What a writer she is - the depth of her insight, the grace of her sentences.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME NOT READING HER?'Elizabeth Day, Twitter