Ordinary people

Format:

Book

Title:

Ordinary people

Author:

Guest, Judith.

ISBN:

9780670528318

9780140065176

Publication Information:

New York : Viking Press, 1976.

Physical Description:

263 pages ; 23 cm

Summary:

Seventeen-year-old Conrad returns home from a mental institution, where he was sent after his brother's accidental death and his own ensuing suicide attempt. To begin a new life he must learn to accept himself and those close to him.

Program Information:

Accelerated Reader AR UG 4.1 9.0 746.

Subject(s):

Teenage boys -- Fiction.

Brothers -- Fiction.

Death -- Fiction.

Death.

Family problems -- Fiction.

Mentally ill teenagers -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Amity Public Library	FIC GUEST	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dallas Public Library	FICTION - GUEST	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Author Notes

Judith Guest was born in Detroit in 1936. She earned a degree in Education from the University of Michigan. She has been a schoolteacher in Detroit.

With no formal training in fiction writing, novelist Judith Guest began to write fiction and poetry when her youngest son started school. Her highly acclaimed first novel, Ordinary People, was published in 1976 and has since been published in 13 languages. It was made into a film, directed by Robert Redford, which received the Academy Award for best picture in 1980. Guest's subsequent works include Second Heaven (1982), Killing Time in St. Cloud (1988), Errands (1997) and The Tarnished Eye (2004).

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Ordinary people on any street where you live, people you might know, people you'll know better at the end of this straight, unassuming, encroaching first novel. A family, or what's left of it--the Jarretts, after the circumstantial whim which took the life of their eldest boy in a boating accident and left Conrad, less ""perfect,"" but much nicer with a sense of guilt he couldn't shake and still can't, even after trying to commit suicide, hospitalization, and now his return home. Home being the place where you keep your distance--from an indifferent, inaccessible mother and perhaps a too protective father who have to come to terms with other difficulties. This finds Conrad attempting to deal with everyone's unease, particularly his own, but slowly connecting (at school, with a girl) until someone he knew in the hospital--one of those two who's going to try again--kills herself, shattering his precarious stability. This has none of the sentimental indulgence of Rose Garden; the obligatory referral and potential market (young people will also like this). Where it does succeed, and succeed it does, is in communicating a sense of life both felt and experienced without ever trespassing beyond actuality. Ordinary People is an exceptionally real book. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.