Set over the course of a single morning in a North London leisure centre, People Know Nothing is a polyphonic, tightly woven novel in which seven strangers – each carrying private griefs, secrets, and histories – collide in a moment of extraordinary emotional rupture
The story unfolds through a series of interlocking perspectives, each offering a window into a different life orbiting the same place: the public swimming pool close to the Edgware Road.
Seven lives
The principal figures
Leon
Leon, a London Underground driver struggling to comprehend a world in which his son is suddenly absent. Behind his formidable appearance lies a man trying to reconcile grief, anger and memories of the boy he loved.
Archie
Archie is a successful solicitor whose confidence and pomposity disguise deep insecurities. His marriage to Georgina has become increasingly hollow, while an older loss continues to exert a hold over him.
Mariusz
Mariusz has recently arrived from Poland, leaving his fiancée Marta and his family behind in Żary to earn money in London. Hard-working and physically imposing, he discovers that starting again in a foreign country can involve compromises he never imagined making.
Bert
Bert, an elderly widower, inhabits an Edgware Road layered with memories. As the present becomes increasingly uncertain, his thoughts return to his late wife Iris, old friends and a London that is steadily disappearing.
John
John is an awkward, lonely young man from Shropshire, now working at Perfect Pizza. Bullied at school and painfully conscious of his appearance, he longs for friendship, confidence and, above all, the possibility of romance.
Tony
Tony, a successful financier, appears to possess everything that others might envy. But a relentless career, constant travel and mounting pressures have left him questioning how much satisfaction success has actually brought him.
Ishmina
And Ishmina, the young receptionist at the swimming pool’s leisure centre, watches them all come and go. Curious, observant and imaginative, she constructs stories about the familiar faces passing her desk, rarely knowing what is really happening beyond their brief encounters.
Moving between these lives, People Know Nothing is a novel about grief and guilt, loneliness and belonging, ageing and ambition, family and love. Above all, it explores the gulf between the lives people appear to lead and the complicated private worlds they carry with them.
In a city where strangers live alongside one another in extraordinary proximity, everyone has a story. The question is how much of it anybody else can ever know.