The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life
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Review
'Utterly captures the sense of quiet desperation of ordinary lives, the huge emotional vulnerability of having children and the ways in which life turns on a sixpence.' Kate Mosse.
'Nicholson writes about all his diverse characters with great kindness and he’s one of those rare novelists who can write about sex’ Marina Lewycka.
'The writing is unobtrusively brilliant - I can’t remember enjoying and admiring a new novel more' Elizabeth Jane Howard.
'An absolute winner … amazingly perceptive, very moving, wholly absorbing. What a huge treat is waiting for those who have not read it!' Juliet Nicolson, author of The Perfect Summer.
'a beautiful novel' New Statesman.
'Everyone is hungry to read something broader and more humane than McEwan and Barnes because we want to understand the society we live in ... The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life is what's been keeping me up at nights' Jenni Russell, Sunday Times.
'Nicholson writes about all his diverse characters with great kindness and he’s one of those rare novelists who can write about sex’ Marina Lewycka.
'The writing is unobtrusively brilliant - I can’t remember enjoying and admiring a new novel more' Elizabeth Jane Howard.
'An absolute winner … amazingly perceptive, very moving, wholly absorbing. What a huge treat is waiting for those who have not read it!' Juliet Nicolson, author of The Perfect Summer.
'a beautiful novel' New Statesman.
'Everyone is hungry to read something broader and more humane than McEwan and Barnes because we want to understand the society we live in ... The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life is what's been keeping me up at nights' Jenni Russell, Sunday Times.
Product Description
Laura is content enough with her marriage, two children and part-time job. That is, until a lover from her past comes back into her life. Suddenly passion and excitement are rekindled, and she realises how stagnant her life has become. But how much happiness has she a right to expect? Unknown to Laura, many others in her Sussex village are living with their own unresolved inner dramas. None of them guesses at her crisis. Yet every decision they take has an impact on those around them. The hidden longings of a large cast of characters interweave in a gripping plot that reveals ordinary life at its richest : comic and tragic, poignant and cruel, surprising and moving - and brilliantly entertaining.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Subtle and beautiful - an excellent read,
By
This review is from: The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Set in a Sussex village over 10 days in 2000, this story has got far more to it than the blurb suggests. Although initially hard to get into and seemingly a bit disconnected, this cleverly plotted story with a wide range of characters becomes compelling as Nicholson skilfully weaves the various strands together. It's written in an episodic way, with each chapter dealing with a different strand of the story, then moving on to another strand, only to return to the first strand at a later point. In addition to Laura,(revisited by an old flame) and Henry who works in television, we also get to know a vicar who has lost his faith, a journalist still in the thrall of her ex-husband, an aspiring play-wright teacher, and others too, both old and young. An everyday story of country dwellers could so easily deteriorate into soap opera and it is entirely to Nicholson's credit that his novel rises gloriously above this and really conveys the yearning, the striving, the uncertainty, the disatisfaction and also the optimism with which we struggle through life. Nicholson gives the reader an insight into his characters motivation which the other characters can't see, and in doing so, shows us how little we really know about one another.I thoroughly enjoyed this thought-provoking story and will certainly look out for more by Nicholson in the future. If you enjoy intelligent contemporary fiction, you really should give this a try.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Inner lives laid bare,
By
This review is from: The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (Hardcover)
William Nicholson is a skilled writer. With this book he takes a variety of ordinary people and invokes what it is like to be in their skin. The stories are so well delivered and so intense in their feeling that this book is a remarkable reading experience.Laura has received a letter from her first love, Nick, with whom she spent ten months as a young woman in her second year at university. But he broke their relationship off - he wasn't ready for the next step at that time, leaving Laura desolate. But Laura moved on eventually, though her experience left its scars. Now he wants to come back into her life. But she has changed. She has married Henry, a TV director and writer, and they have a son and daughter, Jack and Carrie. In many ways, Nick and Laura's story is the least interesting, and sometimes dissolves into romantic cliché, but there are lots of more rewarding characters living in the same village - Liz, who has a young daughter, Alice, and is still in sexual thrall to her ex-husband; Alan Strachan, Alice and Jack's young teacher who writes plays but can't get them staged; the village rector who finds that he no longer believes in God but whose humility and serene patience is perhaps more honest and useful than any religious certainty; The inner lives of these and other people are explored even down to young Jack, who is under the spell of an older, charismatic friend, Toby, and Alice, who is being bullied. The result is a captivating novel that allows you to feel some of these anxieties from the inside. The reader is swept up in the motivations that emerge and even the least sympathetic of them is rendered with compassion and - yes - intensity. This is one of those novels that you can, for a time, live in. I found myself reluctant to reach the last page.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasing read,
By
This review is from: The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (Paperback)
I did worry when I started reading this book that it was going to turn out to be a little trite, but as the book progressed I realised that the author is very perceptive and is able to hone in on human pathos and emotion in a particularly articulate way. Each character was carefully depicted, each one different and well portrayed, and you could clearly recognise the individuals in a living, breathing way. I will say that I was perhaps slightly disappointed in the ending, but I cannot go into why without spoiling the experience for somebody else. Anyhow, this is a personal opinion and another person might love the ending. It was satisfying in the case of Laura, but not so real for me in the case of some of the other characters. Either way, it is well worth reading, and I shall be interested to read other books of his.
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