The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

Last updated

The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life.jpg
First edition
Author William Nicholson
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreWomen's Fiction
PublisherQuercus Publishing
Publication date
2009
Media typePrint (Paperback & Hardback)
Pages346
ISBN 978-1-84724-812-1 (Hardback) ISBN   978-1-84724-818-3 (Paperback)
OCLC 310157628

The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life is a novel by the British playwright, novelist and Oscar nominated screenwriter William Nicholson.

Plot summary

Laura, the central character, lives happily enough with her husband and children, until a long forgotten lover comes back into her life. When her passion is re-awakened, she comes to realise how the excitement has faded from her life.

As the story unfolds we find that everyone in the Sussex village where the novel is set, lives with their own inner dramas. None of them seems to notice that she is going through a crisis. The hidden feelings of a large cast of characters are interwoven to form a plot that attempts to reveal the intensity with which ordinary lives are led.

The novel is multi-stranded exploring the highs and lows of life. Sometimes serious, at others sublime, it tries to answer the central question, how much happiness we should expect from life.

Author's Website https://web.archive.org/web/20120729010924/http://www.williamnicholson.com/bio/


Related Research Articles

<i>Jane Eyre</i> 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Curtin</span> American actress and comedian (b. 1947)

Jane Therese Curtin is an American actress and comedian.

<i>Mrs Dalloway</i> 1925 novel by Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf published on 14 May 1925. It details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional upper-class woman in post-First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.

Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.

<i>The Unbearable Lightness of Being</i> 1984 Czech novel by Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog, and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in a French translation. The same year, it was translated to English from Czech by Michael Henry Heim and excerpts of it were published in The New Yorker. The original Czech text was published the following year.

<i>Across the River and into the Trees</i> 1950 novel by Ernest Hemingway

Across the River and Into the Trees is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1950, after first being serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine earlier that year. The title is derived from the last words of U.S. Civil War Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”

<i>We All Fall Down</i> (Cormier novel) Novel by Robert Cormier

We All Fall Down (1991) is a suspense novel for young adults written by Robert Cormier.

<i>Looking for Alaska</i> 2005 novel by John Green

Looking for Alaska is a 2005 young adult novel by American author John Green. Based on his time at Indian Springs School, Green wrote the novel as a result of his desire to create meaningful young adult fiction. The characters and events of the plot are grounded in Green's life, while the story itself is fictional.

<i>The Home and the World</i> 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore

The Home and the World is a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore. The book illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western culture and revolution against the Western culture. These two ideas are portrayed in two of the main characters, Nikhilesh, who is rational and opposes violence, and Sandip, who will let nothing stand in his way from reaching his goals. These two opposing ideals are very important in understanding the history of the Bengal region and its contemporary problems.

<i>How the García Girls Lost Their Accents</i> 1991 novel written by Dominican-American poet

How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a 1991 novel written by Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez. Told in reverse chronological order and narrated from shifting perspectives, the story spans more than thirty years in the lives of four sisters, beginning with their adult lives in the United States and ending with their childhood in the Dominican Republic, a country from which their family was forced to flee due to the father's opposition to Rafael Leónidas Trujillo's dictatorship.

Mary McGarry Morris is an American novelist, short story author and playwright from New England. She uses its towns as settings for her works. In 1991, Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times described Morris as "one of the most skillful new writers at work in America today"; The Washington Post has described her as a "superb storyteller"; and The Miami Herald has called her "one of our finest American writers".

<i>Divisadero</i> (novel) 2007 novel by Michael Ondaatje

Divisadero is a novel by Michael Ondaatje, first published on April 17, 2007 by McClelland and Stewart.

<i>Rich Like Us</i> Book by Nayantara Sahgal

Rich Like Us is a historical and political fiction novel by Nayantara Sahgal. Set in New Delhi during the chaotic time between 1932 and the mid-1970s, it follows the lives of two female protagonists, Rose and Sonali, and their fight to live in a time of political upheaval and social re-organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dara Horn</span> American writer, novelist and professor (born 1977)

Dara Horn is an American novelist, essayist, and professor of literature. She has written five novels and in 2021, released a nonfiction essay collection titled People Love Dead Jews, which was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. She won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 2002, the National Jewish Book Award in 2003, 2006, and 2021, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize in 2007.

<i>Nights in Rodanthe</i> (novel) Novel by Nicholas Sparks

Nights in Rodanthe is a romantic love story novel by American writer Nicholas Sparks in September 2002.

<i>Everything Good Will Come</i> 2005 novel by Sefi Atta

Everything Good Will Come is a coming-of-age novel by Nigerian author Sefi Atta about a girl growing into a woman in postcolonial Nigeria and England. It was published by Interlink World Fiction in 2005, and won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

<i>Gurusagaram</i> Book by O. V. Vijayan

Gurusagaram is a 1987 novel written by O. V. Vijayan. The novel is a spiritual odyssey into the human psyche. It differs in language, vision and characterisation from Vijayan's earlier works such as Khasakkinte Itihasam and Dharmapuranam. It won many major awards including the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and Vayalar Award.

<i>Life After Life</i> (novel) Novel by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life is a 2013 novel by Kate Atkinson. It is the first of two novels about the Todd family. The second, A God in Ruins, was published in 2015. Life After Life garnered acclaim from critics.

<i>The Whirlpool</i> (Jane Urquhart novel)

The Whirlpool, originally published in Toronto by McClelland and Stewart in 1986, is Canadian author Jane Urquhart's first novel. It was subsequently published in the United Kingdom by Simon and Schuster, in the US by David R. Godine, and in translation in France by Maurice Nadeau. It was the first Canadian novel to be awarded France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in 1992, and was afterward published in several other European countries.

<i>Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra</i>

Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra is a historical horror novel by American writers Anne Rice and her son Christopher Rice, published by Anchor Books on November 21, 2017. It a sequel to Anne Rice's 1989 novel The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned. A jointly-authored third novel in this series, Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, was released on February 1, 2022, two months after Anne Rice's death.