Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

Reviews

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. 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 Barney Norris is a rare and precious talent...a writer-chronicler to be cherished. Outstanding...a moving, strangely uplifting novel that grapples with the coarse substance of everyday existence and poetically celebrates its passage. Superb. Expand reviews