I came across this book last fall while browsing titles online. I loved the cover, and even more the description of the book. First of all, it’s set in London, and you all know how much of a sucker I am for that particular setting. Second, it’s about two young couples with young children who are struggling to connect to their partners and juggle all the responsibilities that come with parenthood and encroaching middle age. When I saw it on the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist I was thrilled, because it reminded me how much I wanted to read it.
I haven’t heard anyone talking about this book. And I mean anyone. It felt like one of those books you come across by chance, and get to feel like you discovered. So I went into it without any idea what to expect, but bolstered by its place on the longlist.
This is the story of two couples, but mostly Melissa and Michael. They live in a crooked house in South London, and as the story begins, we see how much love they have poured into the house to make it feel like home for themselves and their growing family. They have two children, the youngest just a baby, and Melissa is a stay-at-home mother. She does some freelance work for the fashion magazine she used to work for full time, but has trouble finding time and space for it in their home that, increasingly, feels like it’s bursting at the seams.
Their friends Damian and Stephanie live outside the city in a large house with a carefully curated garden. Stephanie is one of those women who is born to be a mother and homemaker. She gets great satisfaction from her role, and wants nothing more than to be able to maintain the lifestyle standards she has set for herself and her children. But Damian’s father recently passed away, and though he doesn’t openly grieve, the loss has made Damian aloof and cranky. He is dissatisfied with his life and feels trapped into forced domesticity. He misses the vibrance and activity of the city and feels stifled by his work. His restlessness has transformed into a desire for Melissa, and he now has an uncomfortable awareness of her that threatens to edge into outright flirtation.
Now, if you’re the sort of reader who needs a fast-paced plot to keep you turning the pages, this will not be the book for you. We spend a lot of time (and I mean a lot) in each character’s head, learning what they are struggling with and trying to figure out how they will navigate the emotional difficulties their current situations leave them in. We spend the most time in Melissa’s head, and it’s an increasingly uncomfortable place to be.
What worked the best in this book is the subtly growing sense of menace. We see this in how Michael perceives Melissa – the descriptions of her movements and facial expressions and her attitude towards him. We see this in Melissa’s concern about her daughter – her injury that seems never to quite heal, her dry skin that won’t be soothed – and how both of these worsen at home. We see it in their neighbourhood, as their neighbours experience violence and their own sense of safety is threatened. But most of all we see it in their house. The crookedness that seemed at first to be a quirky feature that only added character starts to become menacing. Mice are found that won’t go away, odd draughts appear, dust seems to float and settle constantly no matter how much Melissa cleans, and as the story progresses and her relationship starts to crack, so does the house – quite literally. By the end of the book it is bordering on gothic.
There are some personal reasons why I found this so effective, and that I think not everyone will necessarily have such a strong, visceral reaction to. I’ve suffered from some fairly serious mental health issues, and some of those coincided with becoming a stay-at-home mother myself. Those two things change how you perceive your environment. Being stuck at home changes how you feel about your space. What once felt like a wonderful, cosy retreat from the bustle of the city starts to feel like a place you need to retreat from. It also becomes a place that requires so much work just to keep it barely functioning – laundry, dishes, toys everywhere, food that must be prepared over and over all day long. It just never ends. So your perception changes, and if you also suffer from mental health issues, your view of your surroundings can become quite shadowed, at times antagonistic.
The book never overtly stated whether Melissa was suffering from any form of post-partum depression, or whether she was experiencing what all moms do when their world narrows to their home and their family. She resents Michael for his ability to spend his days in the outside world, thinking only about his own needs and being the person he has always been in that space. She resents this because she has lost herself, and doesn’t know how to find herself again – or even if there is anyone left to find. Michael tries to mention to her that he’s worried she might have post-partum, but nothing seems to come of those conversations. But it felt to me, as someone who has been there, that she definitely was suffering from some form of mental health problem related to motherhood. It didn’t manifest quite how mine did, but some of her emotions and thoughts felt intimately familiar to me. Heartbreakingly so. I felt I knew Melissa, because in some ways I am her. She’s in an impossible situation, and while a lot of her decisions and actions are much more extreme than anything I’ve experienced (particularly a situation with her daughter close to the end of the book), I do get her deteriorating mental state and sense of being imprisoned in an invisible jail made up of a family she loves. There is so much guilt and pain associated with experiencing motherhood this way, and it is something I think a lot of women go through but never talk about.
So because of this, I felt like this was a very important book. I don’t know if Diana Evans has been through something like this herself, but it felt like she had some experience of it, either in her own life or the life of someone close to her. She got so much right, captured so many of the conflicting emotions perfectly, and I felt like for the first time I was seeing some of my own emotional landscape on the page.
There are so many other elements to this novel. Music and literature are themes that run though it, connecting the characters to one another, and to themselves. Even, at times, acting as a harbinger of things to come. (The title of the book is from John Legend’s song of the same name.) Race, culture and class are also important themes that are returned to again and again. Three of the four main characters (excepting Stephanie) are black, and they are each aware both of the cultural touchpoints and history this provides them, but also of the roadblocks it places in their way. Damian’s father, though not a great one, was an important figure in civil rights activism, and Damian himself struggles with this legacy and his feeling that by living a suburban middle class life, he has in some way betrayed it. Family and parenthood are central to every part of this novel – mainly how to become a parent and hold a family together. When you’re young you feel like the grown-ups you know (particularly your parents) crossed some magical line between youth and adulthood, after which point they became responsible, reliable, sure, and capable. When you have children yourself, you realize there is no such line. You feel more than ever that you have no idea what you’re doing, and it’s terrifying. This is evidenced in Melissa’s obsessive need to read and re-read parenting books, to figure out the “right” way to mother. And finally, there is an overarching sense that the current moment in history is one that creates more problems than it solves. The book starts with Obama’s election, an event that is celebrated by people of African descent all over the world, not just in America. But as time progresses there’s a realization that it doesn’t fundamentally change the issues young black people are dealing with – in some ways it might create new ones as a backlash inevitably follows any step forward.
There is so much to unpack in this book. I have only scratched the surface in this review.
That said, it’s not a perfect book, and it certainly isn’t going to be for everyone. The pacing is slow, and even for someone like me who felt deeply connected to the characters, it dragged at times. It felt repetitive, which made the pacing issues more pronounced. Though I appreciated how the themes in the book echo the internal experiences of the characters, there were times when it was a little heavy-handed. Some of the plot points and character’s reactions didn’t feel realistic, and the ending felt a bit abrupt. Not all the characters were evenly developed – Stephanie in particular felt like a cardboard cutout of a wife and mother without any personality. I had no better idea of her as a character at the end of the book than I did at the beginning, and I didn’t like how she was treated and sidelined. And while I understand why some of the side-stories were included, they didn’t all do their jobs perfectly and served only to create more questions than answers. It’s also a book that centres on place, and if you aren’t familiar with London, some of the references will be lost on you. You won’t know what it means to live in a particular neighbourhood or the distances and physical landscapes they are traversing that hold significance. Though I don’t know London well enough to get all these myself, I was able to pick up enough from context that it didn’t bother me, but I suspect others will find it more alienating.
I’m glad I found this book, and pleased that it was included on the Women’s Prize longlist. I think it’s the kind of story that isn’t told enough, and one that gave me even more to think about than I realize at the moment. I don’t think it will win this year’s prize, because while it has many interesting elements and covers several important topics, it lacked the polish, even character development and sense of overall completeness of some of the other books. That said, I would definitely recommend it to any readers who enjoy really delving into characters’ minds and motivations, and particularly anyone who is currently bogged down in the mire of early motherhood. You’re not alone, and this book will let you know that.
‘You can take a leap, do something off the wall, something reckless. It’s your last chance, and most people miss it.’
South London, 2008. Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning, on the brink of acceptance or revolution. Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her but, in the crooked walls of a narrow Victorian terrace, she begins to disappear. Michael, growing daily more accustomed to his commute, still loves Melissa but can’t quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Meanwhile out in the suburbs, Stephanie is happy with Damian and their three children, but the death of Damian’s father has thrown him into crisis – or is it something, or someone, else? Are they all just in the wrong place? Are any of them prepared to take the leap?
Set against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s historic election victory, Ordinary People is 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 irresistible soundtrack, it is the story of our lives, and those moments that threaten to unravel us. – Goodreads
Book Title: Ordinary People
Author: Diana Evans
Series: No
Edition: Hardback
Published By: Chatto & Windus
Released: April 5, 2018
Genre: Fiction, Family, London
Pages: 336
Date Read: March 10-26, 2019
Rating: 8/10 (probably more like 6 or 7 without my personal connection, so may adjust it down)
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.35/5 (906 ratings)