Ordinary People

Thoughtful and intelligently observed... Evans's delicate prose weaves issues of racial identity and politics into the narrative so that they never feel heavy-handed...a deftly observed, elegiac portrayal of modern marriage, and the private – often painful – quest for identity and fulfilment in all its various guises

Observer

Ordinary People...is very insightful… a detailed, well observed description of modern marriage

David Nicholls, Good Housekeeping

It could easily be reimagined for the screen, though the film would not capture the sheer energy and effervescence of Evans’s funny, sad, magnificent prose

Guardian

Diana Evans’s fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time

Jackie Kay

Achieves a moody, velvety atmosphere, as though events were unfolding under amber-tinted bulbs...offers a precise sketch of the British black middle class, with a daring fifth-act twist

Katy Waldman, New Yorker

Evans gives us romance going cold with just as pitiless a precision as Flaubert in Madame Bovary... Evans's prose is magnificent: it's as if she measured each sentence, trimmed the excess weight, then fitted it into place

Daily Telegraph

One of the very many things that makes this book exceptional is the even-handed sympathy and unflinching fidelity with which Evans charts the changing weather both of her protagonists’ emotions and family life. She excels at dialogue and she’s also a soulful lyrical chronicler of London in all its moods and guises

Daily Mail

I’m currently very much enjoying Diana Evans’s novel Ordinary People, which takes a forensic look at the pleasures and perils of marriage and parenting and modern London living

Sarah Waters, Guardian, Best Summer Books

Ordinary People offers a unique insight into the complexities and the challenges of modern life, identity and that lovely little thing we call love. From the moment I started to read it I was absolutely gripped - that’s how good it is. It is a beautifully crafted, honest exploration of how relationships are forged and deconstructed, and how the everyday and the remarkable can exist side by side.

Benjamin Zephaniah, South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2019