LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide – a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower – all facing their own personal disasters. This is a spectacular book; unusual, sad, poetic, and gorgeously-written. Five intersecting stories in five very different voices, all set in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral and the context of a single incident reveal how closely we co-exist; how fragile our lives can often be and how beautiful the small human connections that we make on a daily basis can be, when revealed in just the right kind of light.
Selected by our December Guest Editor Joanne Harris
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Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain Synopsis
A Times bestseller 'Wonderful...I was hooked from the first page. It's the real stuff.' - Michael Frayn 'Deeply affecting' - Guardian 'Superb' - Mail on Sunday 'Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent' - Evening Standard 'There exists in all of us a song waiting to be sung which is as heart-stopping and vertiginous as the peak of the cathedral. That is the meaning of this quiet city, where the spire soars into the blue, where rivers and stories weave into one another, where lives intertwine.' One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide - a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower - all facing their own personal disasters. As one of those lives hangs in the balance, the stories of all five unwind, drawn together by connection and coincidence into a web of love, grief, disenchantment and hope that perfectly represents the joys and tragedies of small town life. Barney Norris's third novel, The Vanishing Hours, will be published in July 2019.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781784161354 |
| Publication date: |
3rd November 2016 |
| Author: |
Barney Norris |
| Publisher: |
Black Swan an imprint of Transworld Publishers Ltd |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
283 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
|
Press Reviews
Barney Norris Press Reviews
Outstanding...a moving, strangely uplifting novel that grapples with the coarse substance of everyday existence and poetically celebrates its passage. Superb. - Mail on Sunday
Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent...a writer-chronicler to be cherished. - Evening Standard
Looks well beyond the literary intelligentsia's world, describing with great humanity five ordinary lives, and coming close, as it does so, to being a state of the nation novel - albeit one with none of the bombast the term usually implies...deeply affecting...a tolerant and insightful debut - Guardian
Remember the name Barney Norris. He's a new writer in his mid-twenties, but already outstanding. - Times
Wonderful...I was hooked from the first page. Barney has the real novelist's ability to inhabit different characters, and to make the texture of life tangible and compelling. Everything he writes about love, loss, grief, desolation, and moments of hope and illumination rings absolutely true. It's the real stuff. -- Michael Frayn -
Author
About Barney Norris
Barney Norris was born in Sussex in 1987, and grew up in Salisbury. Upon leaving university he founded the theatre company Up In Arms. He won the Critics' Circle and Offwestend Awards for Most Promising Playwright for his debut full-length play Visitors. He is the Martin Esslin Playwright in Residence at Keble College, Oxford. This is his first novel.
More About Barney Norris
