William Nicholson’s engaging, big-hearted sendup of upscale English country life,The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life, set in that millennial year, feels utterly contemporary and oddly old-fashioned…This is a smart, sexually frank contemporary novel in which plot turns on letters and on devastating revelations in a quaint county newspaper. Readers may find themselves feeling nostalgic for the 20th century… [a] compulsively readable celebration of community, family ties, and the secret intensities of everyday life.