As I read the somewhat elegiac first chapter of Norris' book, in which he introduces Salisbury to us, I prepared to settle down to a read by the likes of Melissa Harrison. Not so.

This is a book written in five voices, each one involved to a greater or lesser degree with a thoroughly nasty car crash in the town. There's the self-deluded and foul-mouthed flower seller; the soon to be bereaved schoolboy who's an odd mixture of articulate beyond his years and immature; the widower, mourning both the death of his wife, and the end a long and happy marriage; the lonely army wife, desperately seeking some purpose in this, the latest of her husband's postings (he's now been sent on to Afghanistan); and the highly over-qualified young security guard.

These unrelated lives come to to intermesh - some with one character, some with another. Though coincidental, these are believable encounters. The characters themselves are believable. They are flawed, but Norris treats them with compassion and humanity.

The only quibble I have is with the writing that's not come from the mouths of the five characters. This is sometimes so complex as to confuse meaning - I had sometimes to take another run at it.

Overall however, this is a satisfying, humane, perceptive read about ordinary people, ordinary lives, often poetic in the way it examines the reality of our everyday existence. ( )

This novel focuses on the intersecting lives of five people, all of whom are present at a car accident one evening in Salisbury, Wiltshire. One character is the driver of the car; another is the badly injured victim; the other three are witnesses to the crash. Norris gives us the characters’ individual stories, each in his or her own first-person voice.

There are flaws in the novel: the voice of the youngest character, Sam, is perhaps too sophisticated for a fifteen-year-old, and the military wife’s section is repetitive and overly long. In general, the writing could have been trimmed and tightened up as well. However, there is a heart beating at the novel’s core, and a questioning sensibility informs the work: Why are we here and what is the meaning of our lives?

For me, it was the driver and the victim whose voices were strongest and most convincing. Norris’s is an emotionally resonant work, which I found absorbing and satisfying. ( )

Not a novel. A series of interconnected (depressing) episodes that don't go anywhere. ( )

An interesting premise for the story but the links between the 5 characters are too contrived and while there are interesting sections, the overall tone is one of unrelenting gloom narrated through the narratives of the main characters. An uneven read and not enough light and shade in this outing from Barney Norris. ( )

Like a brioche burger - great fun in the middle, but rather soft either side. I found the scene-setting introduction rather odd, and the coda seems so short that one wonders if the publishers ran out of paper. Still, Norris is a talented ventriloquist, switching from genteel homes with Aga kitchens to drunken trysts in toilets with aplomb. One to watch, as all the reviewers have said. ( )