Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

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

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.

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.