**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4 BOOK CLUB**

'Diana is so amazing when it comes to writing about humans and relationships... I don't know anyone who's as skilled as her' Candice Carty-Williams, Oprah Magazine

Two 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 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

'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' Elizabeth Day, Twitter

*THE INTIMATE AND COMPELLING NEW NOVEL FROM THE PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR OF ORDINARY PEOPLE*

'A gorgeous novel from one of our most outstanding writers' BERNARDINE EVARISTO
'A wise, tender novel' MONICA ALI
'A lyrical and glorious writer' NAOMI ALDERMAN

After fifty years in the wilderness of London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. Her children are divided on whether she stays or goes, and in the wake of their father's death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray.

Meanwhile youngest daughter Melissa has never let go of a love she lost, and Michael in return, even within the sturdy walls of his marriage to the sparkling Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. As Alice's final decision draws closer, all that is hidden between Melissa and her sisters, Michael and Nicole, rises to the surface . . .

Set against the shadows of a city and a country in turmoil, Diana Evans's ordinary people confront fundamental questions. How should we raise our children? How to do right by our parents? And how, in the midst of everything, can we satisfy ourselves?

'Evans is always, always on the finest of forms' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS
'A writer at the top of her game' LEONE ROSS
'I adored A House for Alice. Her writing is exquisite: every sentence a jewel' ELIZABETH DAY

**WINNER OF THE ORANGE AWARD FOR NEW WRITERS**

‘A remarkable first novel...vibrant...exotic’ Sunday Times

Discover the critically acclaimed debut from the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People

Identical twins, Georgia and Bessi Hunter, live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue. It is a place of beanbags, nectarines and secrets, and visitors must always knock before entering. Down below there is not such harmony. Their Nigerian mother puts cayenne pepper on her Yorkshire pudding and has mysterious ways of dealing with homesickness; their father angrily roams the streets of London, prey to the demons of his Derbyshire upbringing.

Forced to create their own identities, the Hunter children build a separate universe. Their elder sister Bel discovers sex, high heels and organic hairdressing whilst the twins prepare for a flapjack empire. It is when the reality comes knocking that the fantasies of childhood start to give way. How will Georgia and Bessi cope in a world of separateness and solitude, and which of them will be stronger?

‘Hugely assured and very moving’ Mark Haddon

‘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, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers

Winner of the British Book Award for deciBel Writer of the Year
Shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Best First Book Award
Shortlisted for the Times/Southbank Show Breakthrough Award
Recipient of the Betty Trask Award
Longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

‘Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period’ Daily Telegraph

Read the dazzling family mystery from the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People

As a child Lucas thought that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man still living with his sister Denise on their West London narrowboat, he determines to find out more about the unexplained disappearance of his father, the charismatic Jamaican dancer, Antoney Matheus.

Thus unfolds a journey from fifties Kingston to sixties Notting Hill and the host of unforgettable characters who peopled Antoney's theatrical world, most importantly Carla, Lucas's mother. The result is a haunting family saga of absence and inheritance, the battle between love and creativity, and what drives a young man to take flight...

‘Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of life’ Marie Claire


‘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, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers

Après les révélations de Margaret Mazzantini, Elliot Perlman, Tash Aw, "Pavillons" accueille la jeune romancière anglo-nigériane, Diana Evans.




"26a", c'est le grenier du 26, Waifer Avenue, dans une banlieue populaire de Londres. C'est aussi le royaume de Bessi et Georgia, jumelles monozygotes de père anglais et de mère nigériane. Un royaume peuplé de secrets et de rêves, dans lequel on n'est invité que si l'on frappe à la porte. Aux étages inférieurs de la maison ne règne pas la même harmonie. Ida, la mère, dévastée par le mal du pays, passe ses journées à parler aux esprits de la famille qu'elle a laissée derrière elle, en Afrique ; Aubrey, le père, noie ses propres blessures dans l'alcool en terrorisant ses filles ; Bel, la grande sœur, découvre la sexualité et les talons hauts; Kemy, la benjamine de cinq ans, idolâtre Michael Jackson... Au fil des ans, la réalité, le monde extérieur viennent de plus en plus rudement frapper à la porte du 26a... Comment Bessi et Georgia vont-elles les affronter? À l'aube de leur vie d'adultes, laquelle des deux supportera le mieux cette intrusion? Sur ce thème universel du passage de l'enfance à l'âge adulte, Diana Evans réussit d'emblée à imposer une voix unique et originale. Succès public et critique, vendu dans dix pays, bientôt adapté au cinéma,26aa remporté en Angleterre le prestigieux prix Orange du premier roman. Entre onirisme et réalité, ce roman à la fois drôle et grave ressuscite avec une grâce d'écriture et une imagination exceptionnelles le pays perdu de l'enfance.