Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, Barney Norris
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, Barney Norris
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Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

Author: Barney Norris

Narrator: Christopher Benjamin, Claire Skinner, Hasan Dixon, James Doherty, Joe Jameson, Linda Bassett

Unabridged: 7 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2016

Synopsis

'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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bianca on March 27, 2018

Unequivocal 5 stars Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain is the debut novel of playwright Barney Norris. These rivers meet in Salisbury, England, where the five characters of this novel live. The beginning is beautifully lyrical. I had no idea what I was in for, as I hadn’t bothered to read the blurb. Fi......more

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on June 15, 2018

Really excellent debut novel. The book has a strong sense of place – set in and around Salisbury, the cathedral, Old Sarum, Stonehenge and the wooded flood plain where five rivers meet. The book starts with a pastoral, image filled description of this landscape and the “song” of the countryside and......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on June 07, 2018

at times this book is depressing but liked how he linked 5 separate people and how one event effects them all in different ways......more

Goodreads review by Cindy on July 26, 2017

Der Anfang des Buches, ist zu Beginn etwas "schwülstig". Aber der Autor schält sich immer tiefer in seine so unterschiedlichen Figuren hinein und das ganz ohne Pathos oder Kitsch. Was mich besonders begeistert, ist (neben der ganz eigenen Melancholie, der dadurch so authentischen Stimmung dieser Kle......more

Goodreads review by Učitaj se! | Martina Štivičić on April 06, 2018

Ovaj roman pjesničkog naslova priča nam pet zasebnih priča o petero sasvim običnih ljudi, čije su se sudbine u jednom neočekivanom trenutku nakratko spojile, a taj je spoj za svakoga od petero uključenih imao drugačiji odjek na nastavak njihovih života. Pet priča odraz je krajolika u koji su te priče......more

Quotes

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. 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

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 Daily Mail

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. Evening Standard

Brilliant and multi-layered...the author has an uncanny ability to capture even the tiniest nuances of each character The Herald

Awards

  • Betty Trask Award
  • Ondaatje Prize
  • Authors Club Best First Novel Award
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