Ordinary People

Diana Evans wrote Ordinary People as a close study of two marriages happening in parallel in south London. Melissa and Michael, with a small new baby, and Damian and Stephanie, in the long middle stretch of family life. Both couples are slowly noticing how far they have drifted from the people they thought they were marrying.

Evans is interested in the small daily texture of a marriage in trouble. The book moves through dinner parties, school runs, the things people don’t say to each other.

The Obama inauguration sits in the background as a marker of optimism that the personal lives of the characters can’t quite match. The cultural specificity, including the experience of being Black and middle class in Britain in that period, is essential rather than decorative.

Readers who liked Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other will find a related sensibility, more focused on a smaller cast.