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.

A moving literary debut from a prizewinning young writer - a story of the joys and tragedies in everyday lives.

About the Author
Barney Norris has been the recipient of the International Theatre Institute's Award for Excellence, the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, a South Bank Sky Arts Times Breakthrough Award, an Evening Standard Progress 1000 Award, a Betty Trask Award and the Northern Ireland One Book Award. His work has been translated into eight languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, teaches Creative Writing at the University of Oxford where he is the Martin Esslin Playwright in Residence at Keble College, Oxford, and regularly reviews fiction for the Guardian.

Reviews
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
Remember the name Barney Norris. He's a new writer in his mid-twenties, but already outstanding. * Times *
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 *
Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent...a writer-chronicler to be cherished. * Evening Standard *
Outstanding...a moving, strangely uplifting novel that grapples with the coarse substance of everyday existence and poetically celebrates its passage. Superb. * Mail on Sunday *


Awards
Short-listed for Ondaatje Prize 2017 (UK) and Betty Trask Award 2017 (UK) and Authors Club Best First Novel Award 2017 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781784161354
Author Barney Norris
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Black Swan
Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
Weight(grams) 260g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 126mm * 28mm