Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

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.

About the Author :
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.

Review :
"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." "Remember the name Barney Norris. He's a new writer in his mid-twenties, but already outstanding." "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" "Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent...a writer-chronicler to be cherished." "Outstanding...a moving, strangely uplifting novel that grapples with the coarse substance of everyday existence and poetically celebrates its passage. Superb." "Extraordinarily involving and perceptive...a picture of a society evoked through its injured members. A most remarkable book." "Norris has a gift for tapping in to ordinary lives and finding the extraordinary in them...emotional, compelling and thought-provoking" "Barney Norris’ first novel has the deep emotional power and accuracy of his admired plays, and more: a sweeping study of how, in everyone’s lives, memory and imagination may intersect with chance." "Compelling...Norris never loses sight of the love there is to be found in the world as long as one is willing to seek it out and fight to keep it." "Brilliant and multi-layered...the author has an uncanny ability to capture even the tiniest nuances of each character" "Riveting" "Powerful...this young writer is capable of convincing compassion" "Norris writes beautifully, unearthing extraordinary depths in the everyday...a memorable writer, mature beyond his years." "Norris writes beautifully, unearthing extraordinary depths in the everyday...a memorable writer, mature beyond his years." "Just shimmering"