Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Marianne Boeke

Author:   Judith Guest

Genre:  Fiction

263 pages, published October 28, 1982

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Ordinary People is set in upper class town of Lake Forest, Illinois during the 1970s and tells the story of the Jarrett family, parents Calvin and Beth and their son Conrad.  Before the action of the book begins, there was a second Jarrett son, Buck, who was killed in a boating accident while his brother Conrad survived.  The book focuses on Conrad’s coming to grips with his brother’s death.  While Conrad is shunned by his beautiful and perfect, but ultimately cold-hearted mother, his therapist and father are there to help him survive.  

Quotes

“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”

 

“People have a right to be the way they are.”

 

“Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”

 

“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”

 

“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”

 

“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningless actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”

My Take

I saw the movie version of Ordinary People (a pretty good movie, but undeserving of the Best Picture Oscar) back when it was released in 1980 and was constantly comparing the novel to the movie while reading it.  While the novel is not as good as the movie, it is still readable (while seeming a little dated) and managed to hold my attention.  I found the character study of the ice queen mother Beth to be particularly interesting.  Too bad there wasn’t more of her story in the book.