Book review: How ordinary people cope with disaster

Book Review: Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

As a journalist, Leigh Sales meets face to face the people we see only in the paper or on the news. Ordinary people thrust unwillingly into the media spotlight after experiencing unexpectedly the worst moments of their life.

In Any Ordinary Day, Sales looks honestly at the phenomenon of human behaviour, our morbid fascination with other people's tragedies, and sets out to answer the questions these people spark in all of us: What are the odds of the unthinkable happening to me? And would I cope if it did?

We are taken on a conversational journey of discovery as Sales investigates current research into resilience. She re-interviews individuals years after their life-changing trauma to gain insight into the process of coping – what helped or hindered them.

We discover how politicians respond in times of national crisis or to the tragedies of individuals – in ways that bind people together, or push the nation and individuals apart. Mass media allows us to watch them respond to terror attacks, pandemics or natural disasters.

While it is fascinating to think about these issues on a national scale, this book is also personally both confronting and ultimately reassuring.

In the last year I have been blindsided by a number of unrelated events, each of which, while not newsworthy to the general public, was large enough to rock my world on its axis and leave me questioning what really mattered, and how my life would look in the future. It's why I picked this book off the shelf, and why it might be just the thing for you.

Reading Any Ordinary Day during lockdown has been an uplifting experience. It dug into the heart of horrific circumstances to expose human optimism, kindness, hope and courage.

The enduring message I was left with was what I most needed to hear. That while there are not always happy endings, 'almost all of us are far more resilient than we could possibly imagine'. Ordinary people can not only survive, but grow after disaster.

I recommend this honest, relatable book as an excellent read. I also recommend that we all take the author's final advice. It may at first seem trite, but contains the culmination of her research and interviewing. The heart of resilience in the face of adversity.

"Always be grateful for the ordinary days and to savour every last moment of them. They're not so ordinary, really. Hindsight makes them quite magical.'

- Reviewed for Hastings District Libraries by Elizabeth Palmer