Like Normal People by Karen Bender
Already excerpted in Granta and the New Yorker, this prizewinning young author's tremendously poignant first novel is one of the outstanding debuts of the year.A tour de force of literary craft and emotional resonance, Like Normal People charts a family constellation that revolves around an off-kilter centre: Lena, who is forty-five but mentally locked in childhood. Moving deftly between past and present, the novel follows Lena's day-long escape from her residential home with her troubled eleven-year-old niece. While this odd couple takes refuge on a southern California beach, Lena's mother, Ella, goes in search of them and in the process relives her own life's dreams and disappointments. For so long, Lena has been the focus of Ella's world. Now Lena has at last found approximate normality, by marrying a man much like herself, and Ella must find a way to let her daughter go.Karen Bender brilliantly enters into the consciousness of three women at different stages of life, each on a private search for love and acceptance. Like Normal People is a tender, often hilarious and thoroughly unforgettable family drama.
Karen Bender lives in North Carolina with her family. Her fiction has appeared in magazines including the New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Story, and the Harvard Review, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780330373791 |
| ISBN 10 | 033037379X |
| Title | Like Normal People |
| Author | Karen Bender |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2000-10-06 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |