Ordinary People

Description

Diana Evans, author of the prize-winning26a, returns with an intimate portrait of London, an exploration of modern relationships and black identity, and that mid-life moment when a gap emerges between who we think we are and who we are becoming. Melissa and Michael, a couple of thirteen years, have taken up residence in a crooked house in the south of the city, a new baby making them a family of four. Feeling defined solely by motherhood, Melissa's need to reclaim her identity is spilling into resentment at her partner and a growing fear that something unnatural is living in their home. Her solace in her Nigerian mother's stews and spells only infuriates Michael, who desperately misses the excitement of their lives before children. Further south, in the suburbs, Damian and Stephanie enter a year of marital disquiet. Damian's Trinidadian political activist father has died, and he finds himself adrift and hungering for the city--just as his admiration for Stephanie's wholesome aspirations and white middle class upbringing begin to feel more like a trap than an escape. With the election of Barack Obama posing a distant perfection to which modern couples might aspire, these two ordinary partnerships collide and conjoin in a building chaos born from their extraordinary desires. Ordinary Peopleis 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 addictive soundtrack, it is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us.