"Ordinary People" by Diana Evans

Obama has just got in. His happy family is everywhere.

Bruce (photographer) and brother Gabrielle hold a party.

Melissa - article writer - and Michael have been there. The kids (3 months and toddler?!) are elsewhere. Michael's hoping for sex, but she's tired. And there's a mouse in the kitchen. She recalls the 2nd birth, how she'd wanted it at home but the hospital kept her in. Michael thinks the magic has gone out of their relationship. She's bored by childcare.

Damian (his father - not close - died a month before) and Stephanie have 3 kids. She's angry/upset that he's become distant. Damian's father - a single parent - was a black-activist. His book is still a set text. She's middle class. He's humiliated at the monthly Sunday roasts with Stephanie's parents. They moved out to Dorking. He misses inner London. He has an unfinished novel.

Michael and Damian (who fancies Melissa) have been friends since university. Michael talks to Damian about separation. He's becoming friendly with Rachel at work. Melissa tells her friend Hazel that she's considering separation. Michael and Melissa try a night out, making an effort. It partly works.

Mrs Jackson is going senile. She lives 5 doors from Michael and Melissa.

Michael sleeps with Rachel, confessing to Melissa about it. He lives in a hotel for a while. Damian stays a night when the trains are cancelled. Nothing happens, but it could have.

Gangland violence near Melissa's house scares her into having Michael back. There's a sudden holiday where the 2 families plus Hazel and partner stay in a Spanish villa. Hazel wants a baby. Melissa has consenting sex with Damian in the pool.

Many songs feature. People see in them analogies for their lives.

Weeks later, Melissa lets slip to Michael about Damian. His best friend! Melissa's worried about their daughter - she has imaginary friends. One of them is Lilly, who Melissa knows was a poorly child of the previous owner. Michael dumps his old novel and moves out. Hazel is dumped. Melissa downsizes, thinking her house is haunted. She loses her job.

Other reviews

• Arifa Akbar (She is particularly good at the gendered distinctions of midlife crises ... But while the inauguration is a clever way in, just as the death of Michael Jackson seems to mark the end of this short-lived era of hope in the final chapter, both Obama and Jackson are so freighted with American history and politics that their symbolism feels cosmetic and irrelevant in relation to these couples. It is a forgivable flaw, given the accomplishment of this novel, which has universal appeal in its reflections on love and yet carries a glorious local specificity ... In some grandiose passages Evans seems to be deliberately giving us Dickensian pastiche, zooming out to narrative vistas of the city before returning to the lives and homes of her couples.)
• Hannah Beckerman (Race is essential to these characters’ lives, but Evans’s delicate prose weaves issues of racial identity and politics into the narrative so that they never feel heavy-handed. ... Evans writes with great humour and insight about the monotony of caring for small children, and provides a sharp psychological portrayal of the disenchantment and estrangement of long-term relationships. Although the first half of the novel suffers from an excess of backstory, which interrupts the sense of quiet urgency she has introduced in her characters, Ordinary People is nonetheless a deftly observed, elegiac portrayal of modern marriage, and the private – often painful – quest for identity and fulfilment in all its various guises.)