A House for Alice

The new novel from Diana Evans, the prizewinning and much-loved author of Ordinary People

Alice wants to go home to die but is not certain when this will be. Her three daughters are divided on whether she stays or goes, and tasked with realising her dream of a house in Nigeria, conflict stirs and old wounds rise to the surface. Meanwhile their father wanders the flames of purgatory, unable to pass into the light. Will Alice get back home and complete the circle of her life, or will London be her final refuge?

Melissa, to her mother's regret, is long separated from Michael who has moved on to new love. Yet he still wonders if he will ever know anyone the way he knew Melissa, and she in turn is nostalgic for their once safe haven. Held together by their two children, it seems their own circle is not quite broken.

Set against the shadows of Grenfell and a country in crisis, these ordinary people are faced with fundamental questions about who they are, what they want and where, and with whom, they want to be.

About the Author

Diana Evans is the author of the novels 26a, The Wonder and Ordinary People. She has received nominations for the Whitbread First Novel, the Guardian First Book and the Commonwealth Best First Book awards and was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers. Ordinary People won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and also received a nomination for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction. Her journalism appears in Time magazine, the Guardian, Vogue and the Financial Times. She lives in London.