‘The beginning of summer. Perhaps it crosses my mind even now while I wait for news of Amy that something is coming towards us. Like sighting the first slow swell of a wave.’

Years ago, in an almost accidental moment of heroism, Ed saved Amy from drowning. Now, in his thirties, he finds himself adrift. He’s been living in London for years – some of them good – but he’s stuck in a relationship he can’t move forward, has a job that just pays the bills, and can’t shake the sense that life should mean more than this. Perhaps all Ed needs is a moment to pause. To exhale and start anew. And when he meets Amy again by chance, it seems that happiness might not be so far out of reach. But then tragedy overtakes him, and Ed must decide whether to let history and duty define his life, or whether he should push against the tide and write his own story.

Filled with hope and characteristic warmth, Undercurrent is a moving and intimate portrait of love, of life and why we choose to share ours with the people we do.

Years ago, in an almost accidental moment of heroism, Ed saved Amy from drowning. Now, in his thirties, he finds himself adrift. He’s been living in London for years – some of them good – but he’s stuck in a relationship he can’t move forward, has a job that just pays the bills, and can’t shake the sense that life should mean more than this. Perhaps all Ed needs is a moment to pause. To exhale and start anew. And when he meets Amy again by chance, it seems that happiness might not be so far out of reach. But then tragedy overtakes him, and Ed must decide whether to let history and duty define his life, or whether he should push against the tide and write his own story.

Filled with hope and characteristic warmth, Undercurrent is a moving and intimate portrait of love, of life and why we choose to share ours with the people we do.

This was how I heard the most important story of my life, the thing that decided me, the story that determined who I was in the end.

As snow begins to fall outside, two strangers meet by chance in a bar. She is trying to make sense of a life shaken by heartbreak and ruined dreams. He is on a desperate quest to find something he lost in his youth.

From the blustery cliffs of Dover to the confines of a nuclear bunker; from the courtroom witness box to the West End stage, he flits from one life to another, never able to stand still.

Extraordinary though his story is, the secret she is keeping is even more surprising, and will take them to a place neither of them – or you – expected.

From the bestselling author of FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN comes this captivating novel about love, abandonment, and the power of stories to help us find our way in the world.

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What readers are saying:

***** ‘I absolutely loved this book – it’s beautifully written, very emotional and full of wonderful flights of imagination.’
***** ‘Unlike anything I’ve read before.’
***** ‘A deeply moving account of fragile memory and lost love.’
***** ‘A completely beautiful book . . . I adored it.’

‘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.